masking

One of the first things you learn as a stamper is the masking technique. So often we stampers want to learn the latest and greatest techniques or use the newest tools that we either simply don't bother with the things we learned when we first started, or that we use masking so often it seems second nature to us. At last months stamp meeting we revisited masking, both masking the image itself as well as doing a mortise mask.

Today's card is my take on simple masking. I started with a quarter sheet of vanilla card stock and used repositionable scotch tape around the perimeter, leaving a nice rectangle in the middle. I sponged regal rose, celery and apricot inks inside of the masked out portion. Using Swirls (Autumn leaves), I bleached using the large swirl stamp, then used ruby red on the smaller swirl stamps. The sentiment (SU) is stamped with ancient page leaf green.

Once I was happy with the colors, and leaving the tape on, I inked the entire rectangle with versamark and embossed in clear (you will want to remove the tape after applying the embossing powder, but before heating it).

I cut the image down so that only a small vanilla border remained, and mounted it on regal rose with a ribbon behind it.

The basic card is apricot with swirls stamped in rose. I covered the card with a sheet of vellum and attached the image to the front.