Tuesday Tutorials - Masking

Oh this was so much fun to make! We've all seen masks in our LSS and many of us have them in our stash but do they get much play? I find the biggest limitation with masks is that they are so overtly theme-y that if they appear too often in my pages they begin to be like that amazing dress you bought for New Year's Eve and every time you wear it afterwards everyone says "Didn't you wear that at New Years?". They are obvious and hard to forget. With this tutorial, we're going to make our own masks and use 'em up so they can't be duplicated 100% ever again. Forcing ourselves to be creative, right from the ground, up!


Let's get started. Sketch out a simple shape on scrap cardstock. Cut it out with an Xacto knife and trace it onto another piece of cardstock as many times as you want, planning ahead for however many duplicates you want of this shape on your finished layout.


Next, gather up all the glimmer mists you want to use on your layout. Put a teeny spot of adhesive on all the parts of your shapes. In this case, that was on each leaf. Stick 'em down and get sprayin'. Carefully peel them away and place in new spots around your page wherever you want them. I only used 2 leaf shapes and moved them around the page.
Your leaf shapes will curl like crazy. Don't freak out. This is why we have so many kinds of adhesive, people! Gently peel off your shapes, taking great care to not tear your page. If any glue bits stay behind, grab a white eraser or use your fingertip to carefully remove the stickiness. Patiently wait for it to dry. Or if you're like me, grab your heat gun and git 'er done!


Now that you have negatives of where your leaves were, go ahead and get messy if that's your thing. I busted out some magic mesh, some molding paste & paint, a little Distress Ink and mucked up the edges like crazy. I adhered my photo, cut out some wonky photo corners and stuck my leaves down in the bottom corner of the photo. I rocked a little machine stitching on the leaves which really helped keep their curly selves as flat as I could get 'em and also stitched my journaling lines. A little Dymo label subtitle for good measure and that was about it. Simple, doable and extremely addictive.

~ layout inspired by the magnificent Dina Wakley.