The Studio Challenges - Masking

Welcome to my first official The Studio Challenges post!

I'm very excited to be on the team and hope I can motivate you to join in. This week's challenge involves masking and it sure was fun...not to mention that I was actually challenged. And I love a good challenge...so here we go:

"Find something creative from around your home to use as a mask for misting, inking or painting on your layout."

I tried masking with many different items around the house – including tart tins, strainers, cookie cooling racks & seashells. I had no idea how much masking potential is in my kitchen, alone! Here's attempt Numero Uno - the tart tins.

I even mixed up my own little micro batch of spray acrylic paint. I wanted a really opaque white mist. It worked but you've got to work fast before it dries in the spray bottle. This layout would have been fine had I not sewn some of the elements down crooked. (Crooked is a huge pet peeve of mine - crooked anything...grrr) I couldn't fix it so I stopped working on it. Bummer cause I was loving the colors.

I made 2 other layouts before I got to this - the item I thought made the best impromptu masking tool: a starfish.

The dried starfish typically live in a big wood bowl on my dining room table but this one valiantly sacrificed his spot in the display to become a craft tool. (Let me just mention here that no live starfish were harmed to make this layout!)
Here’s my layout:

Materials: Cardstock: Bazzill (kraft); Patterned paper: The Girls Paperie; Stickers: Studio Calico, 7 Gypsies; Letters: Basic Grey; Mist: Tattered Angels (Apple & Marshmallow); Pen: American Crafts (Black), Marvy LePlume (Dark Grey #21); Punch: EK Success

I positioned the starfish in different locations and misted with a green spray ink. I dried it with a heat gun then outlined the shapes with a dark gray marker. In an attempt to imitate the look of sand I then added small dots with the gray marker all over the page. Then I went back and sprayed over the entire page with a white mist to tone down the green. The resulting base was perfect for some photos I had of my kids at our local beach. Looks like my son is rocking a seriously huge faux-hawk but it was actually just the wind at work on his thick head of hair. Here are some details:

So why not join in? You will be shocked at what you can achieve with found objects used as masks. The Studio designers rocked this challenge and came up with some maksing tools I'm definitely going to try. Feeling very inspired!!

Tomorrow I'll post the 'strainer' layout and then the original 'tart pan' layout, crooked lines & all.
Happy Sunday all!