Sunday 18 January 2009

Paper Piecing and Masking Tutorials

An explanation of one of my paper-pieced and masked images hoping it will spark some ideas for your own use of the technique: Why use Paper-piecing? It's a great way to quickly and easily get the colours you want, adding as little or much 3D as you like at the same time. Masking is a great way to give 3D look on a flat surface and/or add background to stamped images.
I started with my card stamped and shaped (in this case with Curved Rectangle Nestabilities in the Cuttlebug) and I coloured the flesh parts with watercolour pencils.
Masking: To give some background colour to my image I stamped on to scrap paper and cut that image out.I placed the cut-out scrap over my main image then stamped and sponged Shabby Shutters Distress Ink to create some grass and used ice blue Colourbox Fluid Chalk direct to paper for the sky.
When the scrap 'mask' is removed the original image is clean and looks like it is in the foreground to the colour placed over it.
Paper-piecing: For this technique you stamp as many times as you want on to the paper(s) you want on your image: A great way to get parts to match background paper, get the colours you want quicker than many other colouring techniques, and giving texture to the image at the same time. I wanted a particular football strip so I stamped the parts required in the colours needed and also covered part of the stamp to get rid of the stripes on the shirt. I wanted the shirt to stand out so gave that 3 layers. The shorts are in thicker card so were left with one layer. It's important to cut neatly just outside the stamped line on the layer that will show: Hidden layers added for depth should be slightly smaller, cut on or just inside the line, so they won't show.
Hopefully you can see the layers here:
I then added hair and football boots and white detail to the shirt in the same way and coloured the ball and ground a little more for realism.
And mounted it on my card knowing that having the kit in his favourite club colours will make him smile:

Footballer stamp: Creative Stamping 2005

1 comment:

  1. Hi

    These techniques about paper piecing are so better for us.

    ReplyDelete