Faux Single Layer with Masking Tutorial

I love stamping cards that look like they're multi-layer but are, in fact, just single layer cards. Most of the time this look is achieved through a multi-step masking process. Tonight I thought I'd do a tutorial to show you how I created the single layer card in this photo, which is a card I used for a single layer Convention swap earlier today.

I started with a 5.5x8.5 piece of glossy white card stock, folded in half. I stamped an image from the Frames with a Flourish set on a post it note (making sure the long part of the image was on the sticky part of the post-it) and cut the image out with my paper snips, leaving a bit of a border around the image (the border is important to help you create a faux layered look). I also took a longer post-it note (long enough to cover the entire card front) and tore the sticky part of the note. I stuck the torn off strip onto the straight side of the note. This is important too, as you'll see in the rest of the tutorial. I then stuck the trimmed out frame image in the lower right hand corner of the card and placed the post it note across the card front, approximately where I wanted a faux strip of card stock to show. I inked up my brayer in certainly celery and brayered the ink the lower portion of the card front. It may take 2-3 times of brayering ink to the same card front to achieve a nice even application.

And this is what the card front looks like after you peel off the post it masks. You've already created a faux layer, and could simply add a sentiment to the label and stop here if you wanted. But for the Convention swap I needed to take this several steps further.

I took the long post it note again and this time lined up the other long edge (the torn edge that I stuck to the straight edge) and lined it up with the edge of the certainly celery faux layer. I like to offset my post it just a slight bit to be sure that the next color will come right up to the edge of the certainly celery layer, leaving no white in between. I then inked up a clean brayer in lovely lilac ink and brayered it onto the top of the card front.

This is what the card looked like after I brayered on the lovely lilac. The faux torn edge really helps with the illusion that these are two separate layers of colored card stock. Again, I could stop here, but I wanted a little more detail.

I brought back my mask and masked off the certainly celery part of the card front again, inked up my Floral background stamp with elegant eggplant ink, and stamped it over the lovely lilac part of the card front. Here's what the card looked like after I stamped the Floral background stamp.

As a final touch I used my Stamp-A- ma-jig to line up my Frames with a Flourish image, which I stamped over the white label area with elegant eggplant ink.




Then I used my stamp-a-ma-jig again to lineup the sentiment from Sincere Salutations in the frame and stamped that in Elegant Eggplant ink.

And there you have it, three faux layers (certainly celery, floral and white) on a single layer card. Pretty neat, huh? If you don't have a brayer at home, you can achieve a similar result by using a stamping sponge or a sponge dauber to apply the color to the glossy or non-glossy card stock. You can also use a sponge dauber or a cotton ball to apply stampin' pastels to non-glossy card stock to create a similar look.
So what do you think? Are you ready to create layers with a mask and a brayer?