Using Vellum to Mask

Over on Tim Holtz's blog, he showed his new masking sheets to create your own masks, wonderful idea. I couldn't find any masks at my local stores, yet. I wanted to experiment and I thought a thin vellum sheet would give me the "clear" look through the open areas. (Go look at this post on Tim's site to see his fabulous tag and how much fun the masking sheets will be, I have some on order, so I can play with it later.) I stamped an image I wanted to use on thin vellum with StazOn ink, placed removable adhesive on the back and cut out the image (I did not cut out the small flowers at the end of the image). I realized I picked an image with very little "open" space, but I did want to keep those "open" areas clear. I stamped my image on a piece of Manila folder with black Archival ink.
Placed the mask over the stamped image. Stamped a flourish with metallic pearl white acrylic paint over the paper, let it dry. Added shades of red Distress inks with a cut-n-dry foam piece and let it dry.

Stamped on music score and holy flourishes with black Distress Ink, let it dry. Used a misted paper towel to gently dab off ink off the acrylic flourishes. Not how the mask allowed the flourishes within the reindeer and some at the end remained "clear". I did 4 cards, and by the end of each of the steps the mask was in pieces. Vellum was a good stand in, but does not have the durability of the mask sheet. Used VersaMark ink to stamp on the word "Believe" and embossed with detail gold embossing powder and heat set. Covered the reindeer with Liquid Glass to help it stand out (since it was mostly black) and added red and green glitters to some of the flowers.

Used gold Encore! ink to color the edges. Added a floral accent to the upper left corner and adhered it all to a dark green card.