Reverse Masking

There are been a lot of beautiful Christmas cards appearing on blogs using the reverse masking technique. A lot of them have looked like the card above - gorgeous Christmas balls that look 3D - I just HAD to try them out! I also had an added incentive of wanting to showcase the technique at my last workshop - maybe I should have given myself more than 24 hours to master the technique but I didn't have a chance earlier and - luckily for me - it turned out to be as simple as it was effective! I started by sponging on a base of Soft Sky onto Whisper White CS. I then added shadows in Brocade Blue. The snowflake was stamped in Brocade Blue using an American release SU set called Snow Swirled - there has to be SOME advantages to a travelling hubby!!!! I then "blinged"up the snowflakes with 2 Way Glue and Dazzling Diamonds. Some Night of Navy grosgrain ribbon bows finished of the top of the balls after I used a silver pen to rule in the "strings". I layered the card onto some Night of Navy CS and finished with a Brocade Blue card.

I was thinking about the Christmas bauble card and decided to give the same reverse masking technique a go and try doing Christmas trees - they didn't turn out too bad - what do you think??? I didn't cut out the triangles I just laid the edges of 3 post-it notes down to form the shapes. A few extra post-it note pieces were needed to cover the sections already inked as I moved on. I used River Rock, Old Olive and Always Artichoke for the trees. The stamp sets I used were Season of Joy, Priceless and Snow Swirled. The trunks are made from Choc Chip CS and the card was layered onto Choc Chip and then an Old Olive card. A few gold star brads finished off the trees.
Also - I promise to show off some of the Regional Swaps I got soon - I have a few photos to work on - the lighting wasn't great for photo taking at the venue!!!!