Paper Seedlings: REVERSE MASKING SNOWFLAKE

Before I show you the finished product that is the subject of this blog post, I am going to take you on a little journey of the process for creating a reverse masking snowflake.

Ready? Grab your travel togs and let's get going.

I first cut a piece of copy paper (not cardstock; it must be thin like copy paper) to 5 1/4" square. I centered my snowflake die on this piece of paper. Because dies and the Big Shot are meant to be used with thicker paper, such as cardstock, or, at least, Designer Series Paper, I ran it through the Big Shot three times to make sure I had a good clear cut. I could also have added a shim, but this worked just fine.

After running it through the Big Shot, this is the mask you end up with. The reason you need to use the thinner copy paper, rather than cardstock, is that the thickness of cardstock prevents the creator to get clean edges from the masking process. You end up with a little halo.

I cut the piece of cardstock that I was going to be working with at 5" square. I centered it on one side of the mask piece and secured two sides with tape so it didn't move while I was working on it.

After it was centered and secured with tape, I flipped it over, and I was ready to go to work!

I used three different snowflake stamps in varying sizes with Dapper Denim ink. I wanted this snowflake to really pop. That's why I chose a darker blue like Dapper Denim. I started with the more open snowflakes, finishing up with a much smaller denser snowflake to fill in the white spots a bit more. I was especially careful around the tips of the snowflake because I wanted to have the tips be as precise and finished as possible.

When you are stamping like this, with so much overlapping, it is difficult to know exactly what you are going to end up with. Now, that the stamping is finished, it looks like sort of a mess. Right?

After I removed the mask, I was pleasantly delighted with my resulting snowflake, created with the Reverse Masking technique.

I wanted to preserve all this hard work and leave most of the stamping exposed.

So I used the larger of the snowflake dies from the Seasonal Layers Thinlits on page 216 of the annual catalog and Silver Glimmer Paper to cut a gorgeous sparkly snowflake. When I held the snowflake against the busy masked snowflake background, it virtually disappeared.

I needed to remedy that. Deciding to use the snowflake as a spotlighted focal point by mounting it first on a circle of white cardstock, then onto a matted circle in Dapper Denim. I then popped it up with three Stampin' Dimensionals.

I offset the sparkly snowflake to the right side a bit because, well . . . because I wanted a bit of asymmetry to show off my stamped snowflake. Remember what they say about "dead center"?

I did end up cutting my cardstock piece down to 4 1/2" square from the 5" square. Once I'd finished my stamping, it just seemed like there was too much white space around it. The card base is made from Dapper Denim cardstock, and measures 4 3/4" square.

Have you ever given Reverse Masking a try? Were you happy with your result(s)? If you haven't yet tried it, will you now attempt it since you now know how easy the technique really is and the unique design you can create?