Whimsy Stamps ~ We're Hop, hop, hopping with Online Card Classes!

Hey crafty friends, I'm SO excited to share our Technique Hop with you today. Whimsy has teamed up with Online Card Classes to bring you a wonderful hop focusing on the Masking Technique. If you don't know Online Card Classes, this business was set up by crafty gurus Kristina Werner and Jennifer McGuire and they regularly run creative classes for a really reasonable fee and have the most talented and wonderful guest teachers from the craft industry working with them too. So come hop with us and be in for a chance to win the class of your choosing! There are even three wonderful Tim Holtz classes, so well worth exploring. They have a class called Mask-erade which teaches you all about 'masking' for papercrafting. Whimsy has a fantastic and innovative range of masks for some of their stamps sets, that take the hassle out of creating cards with the masking technique. If you love fussy cutting, don't let us stop you! You can buy plain masking paper from Whimsy too, but the exciting innovation which came to the market last year and is exclusive to Whimsy Stamps, are NoFuss Masks, which match several of the Whimsy Stamp sets and they really are a game changer!

I had such fun creating this scene tonight. I wanted to make the bigger party row into four, as these cuties make me think of my Swedish bestie and her family, so I've coloured these up to 'be them' as tomten. So so cute. If I'm making these cuties 'them', they needed to be under the starry sky in Sjöbo, where we spent a magical Winter New Year with them. But this time, I've made it a Summer scene, as they're enjoying Mid-Summer celebrations right now. I am wanting to add a sentiment that says something like 'Glad Sommar', which is happy Summer in Swedish. I'm still figuring out if that's what I want to add as the sentiment. For now, I think it looks fab without and I may actually add the sentiment to the inside, which I sometimes do, when I don't want to add it to the image panel.

The first part of my process in creating this masked scene, was to separate the four gnomes I wanted to work with from the party row, so I lifted out the full mask from the set, stamped the image on in light grey, so I could see where I needed to trim out the image, then carefully did just that. I then worked out where I wanted the four gnomes to be in the scene and added the part of the mask which would stop any ink being laid down past the four gnomes I wanted to ink up. I was left with a pretty good crop of just the four gnomes I wanted from the set. My MISTI was imperative for all the stamping of this scene. I laid the mask over the stamped image and I was ready to begin creating my scene.

I didn't take progress photos of the actual ink blending, I was kinda caught up in the flow of it at the time. I trimmed a little bit of masking paper from the top of the masking panel and created a 'ground' with that, you can see that strip in the second image above. This was put in place before starting the ink blending, so the ground would remain white. I ink blended Wilted Violet Distress Ink in a semi-circle around the gnomes, then Tumbled Glass and then Faded Jeans as the final colour. In the second frame, I was masking off the trees, so my 'stars' didn't wind up in all branches when I splattered water and white ink over the panel. The third frame shows the finished ink blending. In the fourth frame, it's time for the reveal, my favourite part of the process, always so exciting and the mask held up really well! I took my time to peel it back very slowly and carefully. But was very impressed with the lack of tacky residue and how cleanly the masks lifted off.

I used two brown Distress Inks, Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain to blend the dirt path. Later in the process, I took several shades of brown Copic markers and added in shadows and speckles, so the dirt didn't look quite so uniform. I also used my Grey Copic Markers to add some shading into the trees, so it filled them out a little and also filled the tree trunks in, so the ink blending didn't show through the trunks, as they weren't solid silhouette images. 

Here are all the Copic details added in. I used a fun stencil from Whimsy Stamps called Comic Half-Tone Stencil to evenly add some dots over the two boys hats at the back. I used a White Gelly Roll Pen for the one on the far left. The other I used grey Copic markers in pale shades to add some white shading to the hat, then added the turquoise spots over that. The pen I used for that bled a little, so those spots are less uniform, note to self for next time I try something like that. But I otherwise, love how these came out. 

I used a Nuvo Gold Shimmer Pen to add some details to the girlie. My bestie loves green and looks awesome in it, so of course I had to make her outfit green. She and the boys have that iconic Swedish Blonde hair, but I wanted hers to be different from the boys beards, so used slightly more yellow toned Copic Markers for her hair. In reality, her hair is more like the boys beards, very Swedish white blonde.

I've taken these pics at night, so light isn't brilliant, I'll try to retake tomorrow in daylight, but our hop will be live before I have the opportunity to do so, so these are placeholders until then. I've had a crazy week, so I'm sliding into home base very last minute with this make! I hope you enjoyed seeing my process and do come and join us for the hop which is happening over on Instagram. Start at the Whimsy Stamps Instagram Account, as they'll be kicking off the hop at 3pm EDT (that's Eastern Daylight Time) on Saturday 22nd, but for my fellow Kiwi's it will be about 7am on Sunday morning! So I'll be up with the birds to get my post live and start hopping along with everyone. We have two seriously wonderful prizes on offer this hop, Whimsy Stamps are offering a $50 Gift Certificate to one lucker commenter and the second prize which I'm super excited about, because I'm a huge fan of Online Card Classes, one lucky commenter will be allowed to choose the class of their choice from Online Card Classes! You may have followed some of my adventures having done a few of their classes. If not, you can check out some of the posts I've shared after doing their classes here. I've just finished another class with them and have yet to share those makes, but they're coming! I really enjoy them, the classes run by crafty companies are usually just SO out of my league financially it's not funny. So I always appreciate how OCC keep their classes an accessible price and still offer the most wonderful tuition with guest crafters who are experts in their field and wonderful teachers. I love that they encourage you to use what's in your stash too. My favourite crafty classes hands down.

Thanks for popping in to visit today. I hope you'll come hop with us. Banner above is linked for easy access. We'd love you to hop with us and see all the fun the Whimsy Team have been having with Whimsy's amazing NoFuss Masks. I'm a total novice, so you can bet I'll be off after this to check out Online Card Classes Mask-erade Class, but my teamies are insanely talented and have worked their magic with these masks, so be sure to check out their awesome creations on the hop. I'll be back soon with another crafty adventure, until then, hugs and happy hopping, Wends xoxo

P.S. Back with the photo update as promised in natural light xoxo

(I've added thumbnails to make your shopping easier if you like any of the elements I've created with. I do use affiliate links where possible, which gives me a tiny commission but costs you no extra whatsoever, though more importantly it helps the companies I design for to improve their marketing practice and track my contributions. I am deeply grateful if you use them for these reasons. I only design for companies whose products I absolutely love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own.)

Challenge Entries:

Craft Rocket Challenge: No Designer Paper

Cupcake Inspirations Challenge: #597 ~ Anything Goes

As You Like It: With or Without Words and Why? I struggle sometimes to know where to put a sentiment or to match a sentiment from my stash with the scene I've created, so I occasionally just omit using one on the actual card front, preferring to add it to the inside or handwrite my message completely. With this card, I wanted to add a Swedish sentiment 'Glad Sommar', which I cannot do easily without reinventing the wheel with little alphabet dies or stamps, so for now, I'm leaving it blank.