Masking oopses and uses

Inspired by the many stamped cards and projects with masking that I have seen recently, I decided to get out a magazine freebie which doesn’t get the use it should and have an experiment.

I measured the ‘Happy Birthday’ sentiment, and cut a piece of card as wide as the piece of card I was working on (122x173mm, to fit a 7×5 card blank) and as deep as the sentiment. I used masking tape to attach the card strip across my project, fixing it to the back – I’ve had too many oops moments when the tape hasn’t been as low tack as I thought and the front has had bits pulled off.

The pansy (I think, I’m not good with flowers) was stamped once on to my project, ensuring it overlapped the edge of my project and the masking strip. I then realised I needed a mask of the actual flower, so I stamped it onto a post-it and fussy cut it out. I covered indicate flowers on my project as I moved across. I actually found this fairly easy, and was surprised at how effective the layered up pansies look.

 Once I had covered my project in two rough rows of flowers, I chose 3 Spectrum Noir pens and coloured my flowers. Only once everything was coloured did I remove the masking strip and I was thrilled with it. I stamped the sentiment in the middle of the white area.

One of my flowers was smudged and even when colored was obviously wrong, so I stamped, coloured and fussy cut one flower, covering the oops one. I thought it looked effective standing proud of the others, the only one to overlap the sentiment blank area.

Unfortunately, I was concentrating so much on the flowers that I didn’t notice I’d got ink on my finger and was making lovely black marks across the bottom and sides of my project! I was pleased enough with the general look that I wanted to use it, so I trimmed off the edges which were badly marked, ending up with a much smaller topper, then I fussy cut the outside of the flower panel. This was then layered onto a square of white card using 3d foam pads for depth. 

I haven’t yet finished the card, but I am really pleased with my first attempt at a new technique. I think I’m going to stamp up a load of toppers and then I can have a day of assembling cards when mojo is low again.
​Thank you to Happy Ink Designs for telling me about her friend’s NBUS challenge (Never Been Used Schtuff). I am entering my card into this month’s challenge.