Masking Unleashed

Masking is one of those techniques that helps you stretch your stamps because it gives you more design possibilities. In Altenew Academy's Masking Unleashed class you would learn many techniques for masking off images and you are introduced to all of the different products you can use to mask. For this example I used Altenew's Paint a Flower Iris and both images in the set were used.

 I stamped the yellow iris on Post-It tape, which is great for smaller or narrow images. After cutting it out along the lines the mask was complete, and I was ready to stamp.

I stamped the yellow iris in Versafine black ink on watercolor paper. Then I placed the mask over the image and stamped the other two irises over top. After removing the mask I watercolored the images using the ink from stamp pads. I used Altenew's Crisp Dye ink in Frayed Leaf, Forrest Glade, Olive for the greens. For the yellow iris I used Caramel Toffee, Fresh Lemon, and Maple Yellow. I was trying to get the bronze color for the other two irises but they turned out rather pinkish-orange. I used Caramel Toffee with Distress Ink in Rusty Hinge and Aged Mahogany. I used a brown Wink of Stella for the beards on both irises. Then I used a clear Wink of Stella to go over the petals, stems and leaves.

Masking is also  useful for backgrounds, which always frustrate me after spending so much time painting an image as with watercolors it's done last. So I stamped the larger double iris stamp on some masking paper and cut another mask. I layered both masks over the flowers so they did not get splattered and I splattered Fresh Lemon and Olive ink over the background. I used a stitched rectangle die to cut the image out and mounted it on a dark olive piece of cardstock with a piece of foam under for dimension.

I stamped the "Thanks!" from Altenew's Halftone Circle stamp set in Versamark on black cardstock, added Altenew's Rose Gold embossing powder, and heat set. I used the matching die to cut the word out and glued it to the front of the card.

Finally, I added the entire piece to the front of an A2 top-folding cardstock. Thanks for looking and I would encourage you to try masking images to make more designs with your stamps.