Un-Masked

When I was little, my oldest brother, Leo, had one of those clear Halloween masks--the kind that don't really hide the face, but instead give it a creepy, distorted leer. 

 He'd put it on and scare me to death every time.  

In cardmaking, masking is anything but scary.

There was various ways of masking (both true and mortise masks) as just as many reasons for using this technique.  Often, I will use a mask to create a bouquet of flowers or to give the impression of depth on a single-layer card.  Today, however, I'm going to show you several ways I use one simple too:  masking tape.

First, I'll use it to make my greeting stand out on an understated card.

Pictured below is my piece of cardstock cut a little smaller than the finished card front.  I tore off a piece of masking tape about four inches long.  

***I take out some of the stickiness by sticking it to myself a few times!

I applied it about two-thirds of the way down on this panel.  The torn edge was just the look I wanted.

I used this discontinued stamp from Hero Arts with the Denim Kaleidacolor inkpad from Tsukineko/Imagine Crafts, alternating direction.  Each inking gave me two good stampings with varied darks and lights.

When I finished stamping my brushstrokes, I carefully peeled away the masking tape.

That gave me the perfect place to stamp "Happy Birthday."  I liked this one from Flonz.  I bet you have a favorite on hand that would fit just fine.

Below is the card I sent off to my cousin Rik.

Next, for all three cards below, I used two longer strips of masking tape to create colorful panels.  The first two were sponged with Radiant Neon Yellow and Orange into VersaMagic Turquoise Gem all from Tsukineko/Imagine Crafts.

Here, I stamped the tree in brown chalk ink and then added dabs of Radiant Neon Yellow Amplify.

Below, I tried my first stamped reflection!

These two cards below were sponged with all colors of Radiant Neon  4 Warm from Tsukineko/Imagine Crafts.  I applied Orange Amplify to flower centers.

Come back for more masking tape fun.

Thanks for stopping by!

I appreciate your comments!

Stripes

Happy New Year!

Yes, of course we're well into the new year now.  Many of you may have all your Christmas things packed safely away.  Not me.  I still enjoy gazing at the lights on the Christmas tree, playing Christmas CDs while I work and all.  I try not to see the aisles of pink and red hearts taking over Hobby Lobby right now.  I'm not ready for all that.  

I know.  I'll regret that in about a month. 

These past couple of month, as the holidays caught me by surprise, I had to, one by one, drop seemingly important things from my growing to-do list.  One thing that had to go were the card challenges.  I felt only a little pang of regret.   I'd recently applied for two design team positions and missed out on both...though I did make round two on one of them.  So maybe I was due for a step back and a deep breath.

Now I'm ready to jump back into the fold.

One thing I really enjoyed last year (besides my precious time on the CardMaker Blog Team!)  was participating in the challenges on the Serendipity Stamps Challenge Blog.  

If you've never checked out Serendipity Stamps before, make that a New Year's resolution!

The first challenge this year calls for stripes.

I wanted to use my new airplane stamp for a one-layer card.  (I bought one of these for both me and my sister, in honor of our cousin Kenny and uncle Bud.)   I brushed a bit of brown pastel on the card, using a cotton ball.  After stamping the plane, I used a kneaded eraser to remove pastel from areas of the clouds, creating highlights.

Then I added these stripes from Hero Arts and the sentiment from Avery Elle.

Hmmmmm.  It looks okay, I guess, but it wasn't really what I had in mind, so I started again.  Looked to me like this design needed a square card.  (So many of them do!)

For this version, I sponged sky blue and pink pastel in the background.  (You may not be able to see it in the picture, but it shows up beautifully in real life.)  This time a stamped the plane in black and the stripes in sky blue.  (Okay, if they look a little muddy, it's because I got a bit impatient and probably didn't clean that stamp as well as I should have!)

I like this one a lot better.

What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by!

I wish you all the best in 2016!