Aloha, all!
When I start out to design a card, I usually think in terms of the reason for the card (birthday, thank you, etc.) and the colors I want to use. Then I go looking for stamp sets, Designer Series Papers and embellishments. But I rarely start a card design process by thinking of a technique that I'd like to try.
Today was different, and you might guess that the reason was that I had a challenge to use a particular technique: Reverse Masking. With straight masking, I take an image, stamp it, stamp and cut out a mask to put over it, and then stamp another image overlapping the first image. The result is that the entire original image remains and it looks as though I stamped the second image underneath the first one.
For reverse masking, I cut an opening in a piece of paper, put the whole piece of paper over a piece of cardstock and either sponge over the shape or even stamp over the shape. When I remove the mask, only the shape of the opening that I cut is stamped onto the cardstock. That's what I did with today's project.
Except for this project I cut FOUR openings! I had an idea in my head about what I wanted to do, and I wasn't sure how I was going to get all four of those images lined up. Then I spied a small stack of scrap graph paper on my book shelf (unearthed during my massive craft room clean up last week!). I cut the graph paper the size of a regular card front (4-1/4" h x 5-1/2" w). I cut directly on the graph lines, which were 1/4" apart. Then I just used the graph lines as a ruler and cut four of the smallest shapes from the Floral Frames Framelits Set.
Here's a picture of the mask over today's card front before I removed it leaving just the four flowers that I'd sponged with Wisteria Wonder Classic Ink. I'd already tried it out once on a piece of scrap paper, and I'm glad I did because my first effort made the flowers much too dark to be a background behind the sentiment stamp.
For these little openings in the paper, I used Sponge Daubers and just tapped them lightly over the openings. With a large opening, sponges also work well. When I use sponges, I like to swipe from the outside of the opening in. By the time I'd done that with these little guys, I'd be bumping into the opposite edge of the opening. That would not make for a neat image!
The sentiment is one of the two stamps in the Million & One Stamp Set (not retiring – yay!). To fill in the background a bit more I used one of the stamps from the Gorgeous Grunge Stamp Set (also not retiring, also yay!). I used Elegant Eggplant ink for both these stamps and also restamped the sentiment stamp with VersaMark Ink and then embossed it with clear embossing powder to help it stand out on the card front.
To complete the card, I trimmed 1/4" from each side of the stamped layer. Then I cut a thin mat out of Elegant Eggplant Cardstock, a wider mat out of Wisteria Wonder Cardstock and then mounted the whole thing onto a Whisper White Cardstock card base.
This card did seem to want some ribbon, but the only piece of Wisteria Wonder colored ribbon on I have on hand is the largish Wisteria Wonder Chevron Ribbon. So rather than tie it, I just cut out a piece and adhered it to the card front using Multipurpose Glue. I cut the V-shape at the left end along the line of the chevron design woven into the ribbon. That was a fun idea! I finished off the design with one Rhinestone Jewel to make it sparkle!
NOTHING in this project is going to be retiring at the end of this catalog. You may have seen Sponge Daubers were on the retiring product list. But Stampin' Up! has just changed vendors. The old Sponge Daubers have sold out. But the new ones will be available with the new Catalog on June 2nd!
What a cleaver idea for your Reverse Masking tech.
Sometimes I just want to be different. But not TOO different. This was was enough fun that I’m going to try it with something else soon!