Hi there! I’m back today to share one of my favorite masking techniques, reverse masking. This is where you cut out a shape and use the negative space to create a mask around an image rather than over the top of it.

On the card below, I first stamped the wire dress form image on a piece of white cardstock. Then I stamped it on a post-it note and cut out the top portion using a craft knife. Then I placed the negative part of the mask over the dress image so I could do some inking and stamping to make the floral pattern. How fun to create your own “fabric” for the dress…the possibilities are endless!

Card by Kelly Rasmussen. See the complete supplies and instructions here.

I also did a little masking along the outside edge of the card.  I used the straight stitch image from the Sew Artsy stamp set to create the white border. I once again used some post-its to mask off the corners, so they would all meet up just perfect.

Speaking of meeting up, how would you like to “meet up” with other stampers online and take part in a weekend-long Virtual Cardmaking Party? That’s right, we’re hosting a cardmaking party September 10-12 in the Hero Arts Flickr group! The occasion? Operation Write Home is celebrating their third birthday and we thought it would be fun to join in the festivities and come together to create some cards for this great cause!

Operation Write Home is an organization that sends blank handmade greeting cards for all occasions to deployed service members to write home on. They’ve mailed approximately 500,000 cards so far—and are still going strong! With your help, we can make that number grow. We would like to see our group create and donate at least 500 handmade cards to Operation Write Home.

Are you up for it? Stop by the Flickr group the morning of Friday, September 10 and you’ll find a variety of cardmaking challenges posted, as well as some fun games. You’re invited to participate in any and all challenges by creating and uploading your cards to the group throughout the weekend. ALL participants who submit/tag cards and send them into Operation Write Home will be entered to win some fabulous giveaways too (more details on that during the party!)

Here are some links to Operation Write Home — lots of great info here!

• Main OWH Website
• Birthday Bash Page
• Guidelines
• OWH on Facebook

So, we hope you’ll mark your calendars for September 10-12 and join us for challenges, games, prizes, inspiration and FUN — we can’t wait!!

Before I go, here’s some good news for all of you who are anxious to get your hands on some of our newest stamps — all of the products from the Jingle All The Way catalog will be shipping tomorrow, September 1st! You can find all holiday stamps and accessories in the Hero Arts Online Store by clicking on the “Shop by Catalog” category and then selecting “Jingle All The Way” from the list of catalogs. Feel like browsing the catalog? Just click on the image below!

I’ll be back tomorrow to announce the new monthly theme for September along with a fun video from Jennifer!

Filed under: masking

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 4:00 am and is filed under Take Two Tuesdays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.