Tipsy Tuesday - Masking

Click here if you are looking for the Inspired Stamps Sneak Peek

Today's Tipsy Tuesday post from Sweet Stamping Treats is about masking. Masking is a way to add a background to paper without coloring in the stamp. Normally you wold stamp the image on a piece of post-it or some other kind of sticky paper, but you can't do that with digi stamps.But you can still mask your project, which is what I did on my picture frame using the Violet Fairy stamp from the last blog hop.

I take a nice thin, light colored sticky-note and put it over the stamps so that I can trace out the shape of the stamp I want to mask.

This is what it looks like.Then the outline out of the sticky-note.

This image is a little larger than my sticky-note so I just took the sticky corners and used them to help me cover the entire image.

For this simple background I used a blue cats-eye chalk, and stamped it around the image until I liked the amount of color on it.

It looks like this.

Then I removed the post it.

And this is what my finished image looked like (before I framed it).

Happy Crafting!
Amber

Tipsy Tuesday With Sweet Stamping Treats

Today I am going to share a tip with you about my Copic Markes. Many people tell me that they don't know what to do with the Copic blender pen. This is one of the ways to use.

Last week I did a project for the Sweet Stamping Treats Challenge.

Inside I colored this stamp

To achieve the light red on this image I used this Copic Marker.

It's a dark red. I had to use it because I don't own any lighter colors of red markers.  If I had colored on the image with this marker it would have come out very dark and not match the red on the paper I used for the project. So I used my Copic Blender pen to apply the color instead. I started by coloring on my clear acrylic stamping bloc like this:

This gave me a pallet to pick up my color from. I don't recommend trying to pick up color from marker to mark with the blender because it only seems to transfer the blender solution to the color marker.I used the blender to pick up the color off of the stamping block onto the tip of the marker.

Then I used my Copic blender to color in the parts of the pinwheel that I wanted to be red. I colored a little space at a time, going back and picking up color from the pallet and applying it to the image until I go the consistency and color I wanted.

 The trick was to color a very small area in strokes. Trying to color in a circle made it splotchy, and coloring too long made the color separate because it applied too much blender solution. I think it came out very well and the color matches the paper perfectly.

This is one of the many uses for the Copic blender pen. I hope this tip helps you with your coloring!

Happy Crafting!

Birthday Boy Card

So while I was sick I wasn't supposed to do anything strenuous, like work on the house, or dig trenches in the back yard, or even drive too much. But no one said anything about crafting.



My friends are always asking me to make boy cards, which is not as easy as you would think (at least not for me). So I made this one. The Birthday Boy is from Storybook, one of my favorite cartridges because I just love the font. It's cut at 2 1/2", and the scalloped square and white inset are from Winter Woodlands, cut at 3 3/4". The patterned paper is from DCWV "the Stack" #5. I think this one is a bit old, and the black and white paper from my graduation card came from this stack too. The solid cardstock is from Bazzil and the ribbon is from Michaels, and just a small bit of bling to dot the "i". That rhinestone is yellow, it just looks brown in the lighting.

And here's a little paper saver tip for you. I cut the scalloped square out of my base brown layer of card stock.

Since I used a white card base and layered several papers on top I knew that no one would be able to tell. So I cut my base layers to fit the size of the card and stuck them to onto my mat. Then I positioned my blade in about the center of the paper, at least 1/2" from the top or bottom. This saved me at least one sheet of paper because I made a couple of this card.

This trick is easier to do if you have a Gypsy, but mine was not charged! So I just eyeballed it and it worked out fine. You can use your Gypsy to set one cut inside of another an be certain that they won't touch. Hope this little tip helps you save some $$!

Happy Crafting.