Reverse Mask a Fish Bowl

For technique club this month, I wanted to show "reverse masking" and an image of a fish bowl popped into my head--I have no idea why. This technique is so simple! For this card, the first thing I did was stamp the fish in Cameo Coral craft ink, sprinkled clear embossing powder over it & heat set it with my heat tool. For the fish bowl, I cut a 2 1/2" circle out of some cheap cardstock with my Circle Scissors Plus to make the mask. I placed the hole of the scrap cardstock over where I wanted the fish bowl to be & laid a piece of post-it note over the very top. Then I sponged around the edge of the hole with Going Gray to get the outline of the fish bowl. After lowering the post-it note a little, I sponged the rest of the hole in with Baja Breeze. Then, I rolled the fish wheel right over the bowl in Night of Navy & wiped the coral fish clean of any ink. Then, I placed another piece of cardstock down right at the edge of the bowl and sponged Going Gray all along the bottom of the card so the bowl would be sitting on something. The base of the bowl is a Word Window punch.

This beautiful Christmas card was given to me at a swap probably two years ago and was the inspiration for my next reverse masking sample.


For my (more spring-like) sample, I first cut a rectangle out of a scrap piece of cardstock using my trimmer & placed the opening over a piece of Whisper White cardstock. Then I sponged Lavender Lace all over the open rectangle. Next, I took a flower from "Petal Pizzazz" & used the "step off" technique to stamp inside the rectangle. I'd stamp one time with all the ink, then stamp a second time without inking up again or I'd do the full ink on a piece of scrap paper & the second stamp inside the rectangle until it was completely covered in flowers. The last little touch was a full-on ink stamp over the boundary of the rectangle and then embellishing with 2-Way Glue & SU!'s Purple glitter. This technique is a great choice for one-layer cards!

Reverse Mask a Fish Bowl