Swamp Gas Drivel : Peace on Earth: Masking Part One

Peace on Earth: Masking Demo Part One

My stamping club asked me to do a demo on masking on this past Saturday. Here is what I came up with. The group seemed a little overwhelmed when they first saw the card, but we took it one step at a time and by the end they realized it wasn't that difficult after all. Hope they all had fun.

Here is what we did:

First, I cut the card base 8½” by 5½” at scored it at 4¼” for top folding card. I used some Stampin' Up Midnight Muse cardstock. So sad this has been discontinued. I love this color. You could try some Night of Navy though, probably just as close.

Next I cut a piece of white paper for the middle matte to 5¼ x 4” and set this aside. I used some Whisper White cardstock for this. Then I cut a piece of Naturals White cardstock to 5”x3¾”. This is the piece I stamped on. I found the natural white color was more subdued than the whisper white (too bright). giving the unstamped foreground portion more of the appearance of real snow.

Now on to the stamping and masking. First I stamped the snowman on bottom right corner of naturals white cardstock in black ink. The Snowman I used was from the Stampin' Up set "Best of Snow"-- this was a limited edition and no longer available. Sorry! But any snowman will do, there are lots of them out there. I used the Ranger Archival Ink for the snowman--I like this because it doesn't smear when I'm coloring in markers later. I also stamped the snowman onto a piece of masking paper. I like to use post-it paper--its cheap and easy. I store my masks with my stamps and can usually get two or three cards out of a mask before I end up tossing it. But then again, post-its are fairly cheap. AND I found these wonderful full adhesive Post-It Label Pads at Staples as well as some regular size Post-It notes with full adhesive. I love them!!

There are other options for masking-- You could use Liquid Frisket that you paint over the image and then peel off later. Or, Inkadinkado has a Masking paper that I'd like to try one of these days. I have tried the Tim Holtz clear masking sheets and I really like them. They should last a long time, saving me from having to fussy cut masks all the time, but they are more expensive than Post-Its and tend to fall off if you are trying to put a wet watercolor background on your project. They would have worked fine for this project, but as there were so many of us chopping up masks on Saturday, Post-Its were definitely the cheapest way to go.

Next I fussy cut the snowman out of the Post-It masking paper—making sure to cut just barely inside the lines in an attempt to avoid getting a "halo" around my image. I placed this over snowman on the cardstock. (I didn’t bother with the stick arms. They were too small to worry over and images stamped over top probably won’t show anyway.

Next I stamped the tree background stamp (Lovely As a Tree from Stampin' Up) over the snowman (I used Stampin' Up Chocolate Chip ink for this). I still ended up with a little bit of a “halo” around my snowman's hat—so I just went in with a brown colored marker and drew in some tree limbs to fix it.

See my halo around the left top of the snowman's hat?

There. Easy fix with a brown marker:

I also stamped the tree image two more times onto masking paper—one with more foreground not worrying so much about the tops of the trees, and one with the tops of the trees not worrying about the foreground.

Next I used a punch to cut a 1½” circle “moon” from masking (post-it) paper and placed it on tmy paper above (some overlap) the stamped image of the trees. I kept the negative of the circle to use later.

Next I fussy cut the ground out of one of the masks—cutting at the top of the ground--cutting the trees off. And, as long as I was at it, I fussy cut the trees out of the other stamped image and set this aside. Save your Post-It scraps!! They come in handy to hold things down later.

I positioned the ground mask under the trees and used Post-It scraps to fill in the edges. Using the post-its hanging over the edge helps keep your paper in place while you are working too! Extra benefit.

Now its time for the night sky. I used sponge daubers to ink four different shades of blue for the sky. I started with lightest color of blue all over card including over the trees that were showing. It's winter, so the sky will show through the leave-less trees, so the ink can go over these trees completely.

Sky with Tempting Turquoise:

Then I moved on to next darker blue and inked the top 2/3 or so of card. I used Island Indigo:

Then I used the next darkest blue from the top to slightly above where I stopped last color. I used Pacific Point:

Finally I used the darkest ink on the very top of card so the darkest part of sky is on the top. The area of the sky just above the ground is the lightest since the moon reflecting off the snow will make that part of sky the lightest. I used Midnight Muse for the darkest color:

I then went back over everything with the lightest ink (Tempting Turquoise) in order to blend all the colors together:

LEAVE ALL MASKS IN PLACE!! I placed the final mask of trees and added scraps along edges.

I then die cut a stencil out of acetate from the Simon Say’s Stamp! Falling Stars Die (I cut it twice, side by side to make it longer) and then taped it over the cardstock with some blue painter's tape. Then I sponged some White Craft Ink over it and let it dry thoroughly (this ink smears easily until it dries, and it takes longer to dry--so I hit mine with a heat gun to help it along. In group, we just took a Subway break.) If you use a heat gun to speed the drying--be careful not to heat the post it's too long or you will have some glue transfer from the back of the post-it notes. I carefully took off all the masks and then used the heat gun so I didn't have to worry about this.

Take off all the masks, lets see what we've got:

Yay!

Almost done. Then I placed the negative of the moon over the formerly masked moon area and used sponge daubers to color.

I used three different inks. I started with Daffodil Delight:

Then added some Crushed Curry to the right side:

And finished it off with some Tangerine Tango. I then went back over it with the Daffodil delight to blend everything together.

Finally—I colored my snowman and added some shadows with markers. I finished it off with my Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Brush all over the snow, snowman and the trees to make it look like frost. And then I decided to do the stars too to give them some twinkle--though you can't really see it in the last pic. I also picked the first sentiment my hands fell on and stamped it on the lower left (Peace on Earth from the Tim Holtz Simple Sayings stamp set). But I found a "Merry Christmas" stamp I liked better before I headed off to class.

I finished off the card by layering the stamped card onto the Whisper White piece and then putting them both onto the card base.