TUESDAY TIPS - Reverse Masking

Last week’s Tuesday Tips topic was masking. Have you been practicing? And, do you already have some masks stored away with your stamp sets? Good! As promised, today I’ll post about “reverse masking”.

Reverse Masking is a great technique & is an especially quick process when masks are premade & stored with stamp sets. I have presented this technique at a few camps. Frame stamps and label stamps work particularly well, so for today’s project I have used the new stamp set called “Only Ovals”. So, how is this technique done?

First, stamp the oval image onto a sticky note & cut out the framed section in the middle.

A few words about cutting out the middle: Here I used a Coluzzle blade first to slice across the middle of the oval & then I was able to slide a trimming scissors in there to cut around the oval. Notice how the cutting is done just inside the solid border. A blade, instead of scissors, at least to begin cutting, seems to work well for me, so as to avoid cutting through the entire paper. Good blade choices are the rotary blade from the Stampin’ Up cutter kit or a Coluzzle blade or exacto knife. You could "poke through" the middle with your scissors & then cut around the inside circle as well.

Stamp the image again on your project cs.

Carefully align the sticky note mask over the cs image.

The sticky note reverse mask ensures that the image you will be stamping next shows only within the hollowed-out part of the mask.

Now stamp over the sticky note/cs layers. Look carefully & you'll see the very light hearts background that I stamped. Lift the mask & you’ll see your masterpiece! Notice how the little hearts are only within that cut-out oval that we made & stuck onto the cs.

Now you can try reverse stamping. Pull out a stamp that is a frame or label or one that has lined edges. If you don't have a background stamp, try "repetition stamping" with a tiny image stamp.

Linda :)