Tutorial and Tips on Masking Rubber Stamps

Hello everyone! I'm here to share a simple tutorial today on how to mask rubber stamps to make little scenes and to share a few tips. To explain how it works, we are going to make a simple scene with 2 rubber stamps - a character and a background - but once you know how to mask, you can use as many stamps as you want!

Here are the products I'm going to use: Make It Colour Blending Card, Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, 2 rubber stamps (Cynthia and Daffodil Dell), acrylic blocks and masking tape.

Please note: Masking tape has a sticky side on the whole surface but if you don't have masking tape, you can use Post It notes instead as you will see below.

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STEP 1: Stamp the image you want to be in the foreground first - in this case, Cynthia is going to be in the foreground so I'm stamping her on my Make It Colour Blending Card and on my mask (masking tape on the right - or on a Post It note). Cut out your mask image.

Please note: Sometimes you don't need to cut out your image completely, the important thing is to cut very precisely the areas your second stamp might touch.

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STEP 2: Put your mask on the image you have stamped on your Make It Colour Blending Card. For you to see better, I am using a Post It Note as mask in the following steps.

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STEP 3: Stamp your background onto your masked Cynthia.

You can see she has flowers on her legs, but it's okay, it's just on the mask :)

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STEP 4: Remove the mask, your scene is ready to be coloured!

A FEW TIPS...

1) WHAT STAMPS TO CHOOSE?

You can use anything you like! But, when you want to make a scene, before even preparing masks, make sure the combination of stamps you want to use will look nice together (or you may waste a lot of time...). Stamp your scene on a piece of draft paper without masking them, it will give you an idea of what the scene will look like. That is particularly helpful when you are combining more than 2 stamps.

2) HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF POST IT NOTES FOR MASKING?

Unlike masking tape, Post It notes only have a very small sticky part as you know. Make sure that you stamp your image as close as possible to the edge of your Post It note to have as much sticky part as possible, and do so that the sticky part is for the part of the stamp that you are going to cover with your background stamp. In this tutorial, the sticky part is on Cynthia's feet since I am stamping my background there and need to make sure my mask does not move when I stamp.

3) HOW TO STAMP PRECISELY?

To place your stamp in the exact postion you want, you can use a Stamp-a-ma-jig. I don't have one, so I try to use visual marks to know where to stamp. On a piece of draft paper, I stamp my character and my background again without even masking my character and I draw a horizontal line representing the top of my acrylic block and a vertical line (arrow) representing the middle of my block. These marks will help me put my stamps correctly.

I would like to have my character a little bit more on the left, so when I stamp on my Make It Colour card, I will just move my background by a few millimeters to the right.

4) DO I NEED TO CUT OUT MY WHOLE IMAGE?

My draft version also helps me define what parts of my character will be in contact with the background. In this case, I can see I won't need the head and upper part of Cynthia's body, so no need to spend time cutting the top of the image precisely.

5) HOW TO SAVE MORE TIME?

Masking takes some time, so don't forget when you have a mask ready to KEEP it for the future! You may need it again and you will be very happy not to have to make another one!

And to finish with, here is my scene coloured in Copics...

List of Make It Crafty products used
Cynthia (or here for Europe)
Daffodil Dell (or here)
Make It Colour Blending Card (or here)

Challenges I am entering:
The Pink Elephant - CAS

Addicted to CAS - Spring

Di's Digi Designs - Easter or Spring (entry #2)

Chocolate, Coffee and Cards - Bring on spring
Inky Impressions - Easter or Spring
The Paper Shelter - Anything Goes

Thank you very much for your visit, have a lovely day! Hugs

Delphine xx