Masking & Ink Blending with Thankful Garden

If you love ink blending and creating soft layers of color, you’re going to love the Thankful Garden Bundle from Stampin’ Up! This bundle includes five versatile masks (stencils) that make it effortless to achieve beautiful, blended color on your stamped images. Today, I’m sharing how you can use simple masking and ink blending techniques to create stunning cards with ease!

Masking & Ink Blending

Masking is a technique used to cover up areas of your project while applying ink. The mask enables you to apply ink only to specific targeted areas. Ink blending involves using blending brushes or sponges to add the color.

Today we are going to focus on using these techniques with the Thankful Garden Bundle. The bundle comes with a set of 5 masks which coordinate with the stamp images in the set. It’s such an easy way to add color and shading to the images.

Start by stamping one of the floral images on either a 3-3/4 x 5″ or 4 x 5-1/4″ piece of white cardstock using black or Early Espresso ink. The Thankful Garden masks are numbered. The lower the mask number, the more color you will add to the flower. The higher the mask number the more detail, less color, you will add. For these cards, I used mask#2 and #3 to add color to the flowers and mask#5 to add color to the leaves.

Thankful Garden Masks

Let’s talk about how to apply the color with the masks. For the cards I am sharing today, I used one ink color to add the color and detail to each flower. The Hydrangeas feature Blueberry Bushel ink while the other flower features Crushed Curry ink.

Once you have stamped the Thankful Garden image, overlay mask#2 and apply the color with a very light hand using a blending brush. Remove mask#2 and overlay mask#3. This time you will apply the same color ink but with a heavier hand. This will give you a light and dark shade of the same color. Finally, use mask #5 to ink blend Garden Green into the leaves. Notice how this technique does not fully color in the flowers; it simply shades various parts of them.

If you want to fully color in the flowers and leaves, be sure to use masks #1-3 on the flowers and masks#4-5 for the leaves. The cardstock and patterned paper layers for each card are as follows:

Blue Flower Card

• Cardstock Layers: 3-3/4 x 5″ Garden Green and 3-1/2 x 4-3/4″ White
• Patterned Paper Layers: 1 x 3-1/2″
• Greeting: 1/2 x 3-1/2″

Yellow Flower Card

• Cardstock Layers: 3-1/4 x 4-1/4″ White
• Patterned Paper Layer: 5 x 3-3/4″

Variations on Design

The last couple of card ideas feature the mask and ink blend techniques as previously described. However, this time I cut out the flowers using the coordinating Thankful Garden dies. Be sure to complete all the masking and ink blending before die cutting the images.

The first card features a few stamped images from the Elements of Text set along with a 1-1/2 x 5-1/2″ piece of patterned paper. Add the die cut flower and embellish as desired.

The second card idea features a 3 x 4″ piece of patterned paper in the background along with a 3-1/2 x 4-1/2″ piece of embossed white cardstock. Add the die cut flower and embellish as desired.

Video Tutorial

Ready to try ink blending with the Thankful Garden masks? You can grab this bundle and any additional supplies HERE. For more card ideas featuring this bundle and other products from the Lovely Garden suite, check out a simple fun fold design HERE. You can also find some quick and simple card ideas using the Lovely Garden Designer Series Paper HERE.

I hope these card ideas inspire you to play around with masking and ink blending using supplies you may already have. These techniques are not just for coloring images! You can use masking and ink blending to create beautiful backgrounds too!

Be sure to watch the video to see how easy it is to add color to the Thankful Garden images! Have a fun and creative day my friends! ~ Lynn