Starry Thanks

I've been participating in Online Card Classes' newest class, "Mask-erade." The theme, as the name indicates, is all about masking techniques. Laura Bassen had a lesson on Day 1 of class on "Ink Blending with Masks." Her lesson inspired my card.

I began by die cutting a star from a transparency sheet, using one of the Lifestyle Crafts "Nesting Star" dies. I initially tried just holding it in place when I was inking, but it kept slipping and the corners lifted up. So I ended up spraying the back with Krylon Easy Tack repositionable adhesive spray.

After cutting my cardstock to 4x5.25", I stuck the stencil down, and inked through it with Squeezed Lemonade Distress ink. After wiping the ink off the mask, I removed it, pivoted it slightly so it mostly overlapped the first star, and inked again with Mustard Seed. I repeated this process with Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, & Festive Berries Distress inks.

Once I'd finished inking, I removed my mask. I noticed I had a few inky "oops" on my cardstock, so I ended up trimming the panel to 4x4". 

I die cut the "thanks" from the panel with Savvy Stamps' "Thanks Script" die. I made sure to keep all the little pieces that went inside the letters. I applied a piece of Scor-Tape to the back of the panel, so the sticky side was exposed through the die cut negative.

I then die cut the "thanks" 4 more times from white cardstock. I adhered one of those in the negative space on my panel, and then stuck the little inside pieces (from the first die cutting) in place. I glued the next 2 white pieces over the first one, using my 2-way glue pen. That was getting a bit too messy, though, so I ran the final white piece and the colored die cut through my Xyron Creative Station machine. This applied a layer of adhesive to the backs. Finally, I adhered those in place, giving me a "camouflaged," dimensional die cut greeting.

Detail of greeting

To finish the card, I cut a piece of black paper to 4x4.25", and used that to mat the focal panel. I adhered that in place on my card base, which I'd cut to 4x5.5". I added a strip of yellow cardstock to the bottom, and did faux stitching lines with a fine-point black pen. I will be sending this in my final box to Operation Write Home, before their last deadline of August 1, 2015.