Crafting with a View: A Year of Card Techniques ~ November Blog Hop ~ Masking Magic!

November 17, 2017

A Year of Card Techniques ~ November Blog Hop ~ Masking Magic!

Welcome to

Welcome to A Year of Card Techniques Blog Hop where each month we feature a different card technique. We’ve assembled a team of card makers who range from new to advanced, so you’ll see a great variety of cards and ideas.

This month we’re going to explore masking techniques. There are so many variations of masking, it would be difficult to list them all here. But, since pictures speak louder than words, we’ll let our team show you the masking techniques they opted to try. Hopefully, we’ll inspire you to try one yourself. If you would like to check out our past technique hops, you can do that here:

Our amazing sponsor this month is Jodie Park of Close to My Heart

Please take a moment to check out her store here.

And the awesome prize this month is:

We really appreciate feedback, so please leave a comment on each of the blogs in the hop today. The winner will be announced on Sunday, November 26, 2017, on A Piece of (my) Heart’s blog, so be sure to check her blog on Sunday. The winner will have until December 14, 2017, to claim their prize.

You should have arrived here from the lovely Debbie. If you're visiting here first, you might want to start at the beginning so you don't miss a thing and increase your chances of winning by commenting on each blog.

While the year is slowly coming to an end I have to say it was so much fun working every month on these wonderful techniques. I hope you enjoyed every moment as much as I did.

But let's get back to this months challenge. We all have dies at home right? Some come with matching stamps and others are on there own. Well this month we were trying to find a way to get more out of our dies. So what else can you do with them?

I settled on a pair of snowflakes I found in my stack of things. First order of the challenge, I ran them through my BigShot and put them on my desk.

Looking at the cut-outs and the negative space they left I thought about creating two cards by using both "cut-outs".

I stared with the snowflake die-cuts. I put some removable adhesive on the back of them and adhered them temporary to a piece of white cardstock. I used a sponge daubber and some distress inks in different hues of blue to cover the white cardstock completely. Then I had the great idea to use some of my shimmer paint to add little sprinkles to the piece....well.... instead of sprinkles I emptied the whole container over my cardstock.....yikes! But as I always say, there are not mistakes ;-) I grabbed a piece of kitchen paper and soaked up the excess....which left me with a beautiful shimmer on my cardstock. It looks up-close like the milky-way. I then removed the snowflakes which left me with two beautiful white impressions.

For my second card I used the negative space of the die-cuts as a template. I started with the smaller flake and three different hues of blue. I randomly laid the template down and sponged the colors on. Last I used the big flake and some really light blue distress ink to fill in the empty space. As you can see really soft so overlapping the colors wasn't a problem.

When you try this with your negative cuts, just make sure you hold the template well in place and be careful sponging in between the fine cutouts.

You can use removable adhesive to hold it down too, but it works with out if you are careful applying the inks.

From my first example I created the card seen on the left here. I matted it with some silver foiled cardstock. I also cut the big snowflake from silver paper and offset it on the white . A few rhinestones and a little greeting finishing this card up.

I do love how the colors blend in from light to dark which makes the white snowflakes really stand out. And my shimmer paint accident made a real special effect...have to remember that!

For my second sample I used some mat silver cardstock as the matting part of the card. Since the blues were a bit strong for my taste, I layered a piece of vellum on top to tune it down just a bit.

Another silver snowflake and a few rhinestone complete this card to.

So when you look through your dies, always remember to think outside the box and used them in a few other ways than planed. I hope you enjoyed this months hop and I will have more detailed information about both of these cards on my Friday follow-ups on the blog here. So make sure to check back often and don't forget to leave a comment below and on the way.

Now this is the end for this months blog hop. Hope you had fun and thanks for stopping by. See you next month with another great technique!

Claudia

Always remember:

"Art comes from the heart.

So there is never a right way or a wrong way;

there is only Your Way."

Here’s the full line-up in case you get lost along the way: