Quixotic Paperie 2nd birthday celebrations - Make It Crafty spotlight and masking tutorial

Hi all!  Apologies again to you all for not being around much for the past two weeks - mega busy at work plus doing my course - don't you hate it when real life gets in the way of crafting and blogging?!  Anyway, I'm here today for two reasons: to give you a chance to win lots of prizes AND a masking tutorial that a few of you have asked for!

So, firstly, how can you win prizes?!  Today is a joint celebration!  As you may be aware, this is the month that Quixotic Paperie turned TWO! What you may not know is that it is also the month in which Australian company Make it Crafty is turning ONE!

Quixotic Paperie have been stocking the fantastic Make it Crafty range of products (Rubber Stamps - Lasercut Chipboard - Make it Colour Blending Card) since April 2011, and are one of the first places you can find them outside of Australia! We are thrilled to be celebrating with Make it Crafty today.

To celebrate we thought that rather than a blog hop we would set a CHALLENGE using Make it Crafty products!!  To get inspired, hop on over to the Make it Colourful challenge blog where you will see the amazing creations our fabulous DT’s have created for this event! PLUS find out all the details on how you can play along!

OF COURSE THERE ARE PRIZES!!

There are FIVE challenge categories and there will be FIVE GRAND WINNERS! 

PLUS, PLUS, PLUS

There will be random winners throughout the whole month. The numbers have been pre-selected and as soon as an entry is added that matches that number they WIN! Winners will be announced soon after entry on the sidebar of Make it Colourful.

PLUS there’s MORE!! 

Quixotic Paperie have a little something for you too!! Make sure you pop on over to HERE to enter your name for a chance at MORE Make it Crafty Goodies!!

PLUS THERE’S MORE!!!

Zoe, the owner of Make it Crafty has a super duper HUGE Candy give away – choc-a-block FULL of Make it Crafty goodies!! AND I have heard a whisper that she is planning on having random giveaways on her blog throughout the month of July! All you need to do is leave her some love as she’ll randomly be choosing people who have commented on her posts throughout the last year!!

PLUS THERE’S EVEN MORE!!! (I gotta sit down here from the excitement of it all!)

You’ll also receive a set of steak knives when you... hahaa ONLY Joking BUT... for THREE DAYS ONLY you’ll be able to get 40% off Make it Crafty Digi Stamps when you enter the coupon code: CELEBRATE (Ends June 28^th)

So I do hope you will celebrate with us this month and get into the Make it Crafty spirit of FUN!!

Okay, so onto my make and tutorial!  First here is my card...

 

Ohhhh, I just so wish I was in the Caribbean right now!  I wanna dance like this Make It Crafty Hula Girl in front of a bunch of Make It Crafty Palm Trees!  I kept it pretty simple, using Bazzill Basics Kraft cardstock to give it a natural feel and my every trusty Sew-Easy Stitch Piercer Tool and Straight Head with cream floss.  I found that material in my stash - I have no idea where I got it from!!


So onto my masking tutorial!  There are loads of them out there on this but this is how I do it....

You can see from picture 1 the tools I use.  So first, create your mask, picture 2.  Stamp the image you want in the forefront onto your cardstock and then stamp it a second time onto thin paper (if it is too thick, it will create a 'halo' effect around the image).  I've seen others stamp onto a Post It note, using the glue end, but I just use pieces of scrap paper. 
 

Let the ink dry and then cut out as close as possible to the line, picture 3.  You can see in picture 4 that I use serrated scissors which gives me complete control (especially as I am clumsy!).

Spray repositional glue on the back of the mask (picture 5) and then place it over the top of the image on your cardstock, picture 6.  I coloured some red pen on my mask to help show the mask but it didn't work out very well, lol!!

The next step is to stamp your second image that you want behind the first image, picture 7.  Keep the mask in place if you want to stamp more overlapping images.  Picture 8 shows the mask still in place...

 ...and picture 9 shows it with the mask removed - voila!  I keep my masks as you can re-use them repeatedly.

Thanks if you're still with me!  I hope you found that useful - as usual, any questions or have any tips you'd like to share, please leave a comment to this post!  Bye for now!

I am entering this card into the following challenges:

• Wags 'n Whiskers - summertime creations
• Moving Along With The Times - CAS (I think this counts?!!)
• Totally Stampalicious - something old (the material!), something new (the stamps!)