Masking and Stamping by Frankie Gaywood

Hi everyone, it's my last time to share my guest spot with you, but I hope they ask me again (!!!) cos I have been thrilled to see your reactions to my work, so thanks everyone who left me a comment here, and those who also left one on my personal blog...

So...  what have I done for this last post? Well, I decided to share the masking technique with you ... many of you will know this one, but some may not, and many of you will have forgotten it. It allows you to use your stamps in whole new ways, and that has been my theme this month... I will put a list of the stamps used at the end of this piece, so you can hop over to the Artistic Stamper site, and get some for yourself... tee hee!!

To begin with, I decided on a theme of postcards, and had chosen some bird stamps as the main images. I used my deckle edge scissors on 2 pieces of shiny cardstock, and crimped around both bits, stamping one card with the post card stamp and a postage stamp.  I drew the line with a sharpie pen.

Next I stamped my birdie images in archival black then embossed with clear embossing powder. Then, I  attached my masking paper... you can see where I had already had a practice 'cos the paper is overprinted with brown...

Having masked all the bits I wanted to stay clean and clear, I inked up the music background stamp with sepia archival ink, and printed just off centre, over my masked pieces.

Here it is with the finished overprinting, and the masks removed - simples!!!

The next process was to ink and distress the background, which I did with old paper distress ink. Then I did the sprinkle thingie - you know, when you spray  clear water on to your fingers then splatter it on to the ink. I used a roll of kitchen wipe, that I keep for just such a purpose, to blot up the excess water, to leave spots of lighter colour.

I stamped a ickle postie card and letter and distressed them in a similar way. The uneven dotty stamp came in very useful for adding age dots to my piece. For this I used frayed burlap and bundled twigs.

And this is the finished article, all mounted together on a distressed background, and made to look like a set of old letters and cards in a pile...

My Tim Holtz paper distresser came in handy here!!! I used it quite heavily to rip and tear too!!

This is the main image close up, showing the distress and "mould" spots and

This is the whole thing full on to the camera...

I hope you have enjoyed seeing this ickle card get made, and how the background stamps can be used differently, overstamping with masks... I also hope that I will see you again very soon, either here or on my own blog, where I would love to share some more pieces with you... meanwhile, get inky and ENJOY!!!

Love and light

Frankie

xx

Those Stamps

birds of a feather plate

music background

grid background

random dots background

ephemera plate

postage no1 plare