Decorative Masks/Stencils

Have you looked at the various decorative masks that have been available in our catalogues and wondered what you could do with them or how you should look after them? Wonder no more. Everything you need to know about decorative masks or stencils is detailed below for your reference.

In addition to the decorative masks we will use a few other products and tools. This is a picture of some of them. All will be revealed as we continue.

A decorative mask is essentially a flat sheet with punched out sections or patterns. Basically, how it works is you lay the sheet over a piece of card stock. The card stock is hidden under the sections not punched out and exposed in the areas where it is punched out. You can then do all sorts of creative things in the exposed areas and when you remove your sheet/decorative mask you will see sections untouched and areas that you have added your creativity to. The most common product to use with a decorative mask is ink. Lets look at a few ways of using ink with a decorative mask below.

To get a lovely clean image you don’t want your decorative mask to move while you are working with it. If you wish to create a shadow effect you can do this by inking through the mask once and then move it slightly at an angle from the first inking and then ink it again. You will have two patterns with one slightly offset. But even if you want a shadow effect, you still want the decorative mask to remain in place while you are working on it.

My top tip is to adhere your mask and card stock together with low tack tape and this way they won’t move apart until you release them. You will see in the picture above that I have adhered the card stock to the back of the mask.

With your mask on top, use an ink blending tool such as a blending brush, sponge dauber or piece of sponge. Gently add ink over the decorative mask either working your way across the card stock or just in the areas you want to add the pattern. Because the decorative mask is made out of plastic, the ink on top of the mask will not set, so be careful not to get it on your fingers and then transferred to the card stock where you don’t want it!

Once you have inked the area that you want a pattern on, separate the decorative mask and card stock. Remember, there will still be ink on the top of the decorative mask, so my advice would be to wash and dry it straight away, ready for its next use. Less chance of ink ending up in the wrong spot this way!

Some decorative masks are designed to lay over each other creating a multi step pattern where you can add different colours at each step. It is usually best to lay down the most open mask first and apply your lightest colour and as the masks grow more detailed add darker colour.

For the pattern pictured I thought it would be easier to do the smaller, darker pattern first and the larger, lighter pattern second as I wanted to make sure the smaller patterns were lined up in the centre of the larger pattern and it was easier to see this way. It turned out well.

Here is another layering decorative mask with one layer being boxes and the other layer crossing stripes. I used complimentary colours with orange inking the areas not covered by the crossing stripes and then adding red squares over the top. It is very pretty as it is but you could also rule lines between the red squares for an additional stripe of colour.

Here are a couple of cards made with the backgrounds created with the ink and decorative mask technique, using the ones we created above.

Another way to use a decorative mask is to make labels or shaded areas to then stamp over or in the inked area. Below you will see that we have used both the positive and negative mask. This creates the same shape but in the top case the ink or colour is within the shape and in the bottom case the mask was used to cover the shape and keep it clean from ink, while ink was used to define the edge of the shape. Once you remove the mask the un-inked section seems to come forward and look like it is sitting on a coloured inked area.

You can fussy cut out the top shape to create a label and add with dimensionals to a project. The design on the bottom would be better done within a larger area of card stock or directly onto the card base.

As well as ink, you can use other product with your decorative mask. Lets have a quick look at embossing paste. I have used the matte embossing paste in this example but you can also purchase shimmering embossing paste which contains glitter and has a lovely sparkle when dried.

Secure your card stock in the same way as above and using a palette knife put a little bit of embossing paste on the back of the knife (it is easier to spread from the back of the knife). Tip: a little goes a long way. Spread it over the card stock in the areas you want the paste to go, making sure to fill the holes and scrap as much off the top of the mask as possible. Return any excess back to the container.

Remove your decorative mask to find a textured pattern sitting on top of your card stock. Give this time to dry or speed up the process with a heat tool.

A couple of tips when working with embossing paste: don’t completely remove the foil from the top of the container when you open it. Use this to reseal the container when you put the lid back on. This will help your embossing paste not to dry out and last longer.

Secondly, wash your decorative mask and knife immediately after you have used them, otherwise the paste will dry on your tools and make it hard to use them again in the future. If it is not going to be convenient to wash them straight away, have a container of water nearby that you can immerse them in until you can clean them properly.

Another fun technique is to add ink to your embossing paste. This opens up a world of colour and texture on your projects. Just note that as you are adding colour to a white product, the embossing paste, it will lighten the ink colour.

On a silicon mat, put a small pile of embossing paste and a couple of drops of ink. Mix them together until you have an even colour and no white bits. If you want the colour darker, add another drop of ink and re-mix them. Keep doing this until you have the colour you want.

Working in the same way that we did with the white embossing paste above, spread it over your decorative mask filling the holes and scrapping off the excess paste. Any paste left over will need to be thrown away, don’t put it back in with the white paste or you will contaminate it with the colour.

Again, remove your mask, clean it and put your embossed card stock aside to dry. If you have any bits of paste hanging over the edges that you don’t want, scrap your palette knife gently along the card stock edges while the paste is still wet, this will remove it.

So far we have been adding colour to our card stock through the decorative mask, to create patterns and images. This time we will use the decorative mask to create a pattern by removing colour.

Create a coloured piece of card by ink blending all over the piece. The more saturated the paper the better this technique works.

Lay your decorate mask over the card stock and adhere them together with low tack tape. With a damp towel or baby wipe, gently wipe the towel over the decorative mask, picking up the ink in the exposed areas. When you remove your mask you will find there has been a colour change or removal where you have wiped over the decorative mask. Because most colours are made up of different amounts of other colours it is really interesting to see how the colour changes with this technique.

Tip: be careful not to remove too much colour or you will go back to your white card stock and this could compromise the card.

Another tip with all the techniques above is to create on a piece of card stock larger than you will need in the end. This way you can trim it down to the best bits for your project.