I have excitedly begun taking classes for the Altenew Certification program. I began with the courses on masking. Although fully aware of its value in the digital photography realm, I was quite unaware of its benefits in the stamping world.
Much to my surprise, Masking can be an extremely useful tool. Especially, as it helps the crafter create and change the depth of field and appearance of a particular focal point. For example, in the card below, with the use of a mask the center flower appears to be in front of the leaves and hanging, just partially in front of the vase.
I began this card by taping down the negative stencil of the flower of choice. I than use used my blending brushes to ink the space using Soft Lilac, Wysteria, and the smallest amount of my pearlized complimentary spray. (I sprayed a gelli pad and used my blending brush to bring just the faintest of iridescence to the flower.) I proceeded to stamp the actual flower stamp in gold. The Atlenew Gold Pigment is nice and thick and truly brings outs the detail in the flower. Unfortunately, this was not quite captured in the picture.
I would like to point out at that I had created a negative stencil with my die cut machine on my Cricut transfer paper to be placed over the Altenew stencil to hold it in place while blending these colors. Also, note, I put a gold sticker on the stencil itself, to make sure I had the right side of the stencil facing up. (After watching a video of another who did a wonderful job coloring her flowers only to discover the stencil was facing the wrong way, I knew I needed to mark my own stencil or I too, would encounter the same challenge.
look to the flower.)
After coloring the flower and stamping it, I covered it with the matching mask. Afterwhich, I stamped the leaf and vase. I overlapped both stamps so as to give the appearance that these images were behind the center flower.
The image above is from a different but similar card. Unfortunately, I had not captured a picture at this step, though the process is the same.
After completion, stamped my Thank You sentiment, inked the edges of the white cardstock with gold, raised it with thick adhesive tape before placing on the white cardstock base.
I loved how using the various methods of stencils and masks can create a more dynamic depth of field, detail and realism to the way these beautiful flowers lie.
testing