Masking and reverse masking

One of the first techniques I learned as a stamper was masking. That's when you stamp something first and then protect it with a "mask" so you can stamp around it and not get the lines of the other images in it. It's the same principle used when we do house painting - You apply masking tape to your woodwork so that you can protect it.

In this case you'll see that I made a mask with the punched circle so that I could protect the card stock and it would be a setting sun.

What is different is, once I was finished sponging all the sky colors, I removed the mask and I reversed-masked. That simply means that I took the original piece of paper from which the circle was punched  and I used it as the mask. Now everything around the circle was protected but the circle was open. Then I was able to sponge my colors on for the setting sun.

This was all done on white glossy card stock. Glossy card stock allows you to  easily swipe colors.

Then I stamped the tree branch image from Serene Silhouettes and the sentiment from Simply Sketched hostess set in black Staz On ink.

Under my stamped piece, I layered a slightly larger piece of black card stock. I finished the card off by running the card Soft Sky card base through the Big Shot using my Tulip Frame embossing folder. 

This card was a case of a card by Wendy Noble. I found it on Splitcoaststampers.com.