 Hello there, it's Sandy and I'm going to show you several easy masking techniques for stamped watercolor. And this is the art impressions stamp set that's called Vegetables. I was hoping there was going to be a really big pumpkin. I wanted a big pumpkin and there wasn't a big pumpkin so there are tiny ones, all kinds of vegetables. This tree I haven't used yet, this Bible journaling tree is a really tall one and the door I thought would be kind of fun to make a mystery scene. There's not going to be a building behind it, it's just going to be the door into the forest, the door into nothing. And I'm applying some Tombow marker, some brown and some gray onto the door itself and then wiping off the corners. That is one really easy masking technique. If there's an area that you don't want to stamp and you want to stamp the things you're in front of it, just wipe the ink off. That's all. Super easy to do. So I've pressed the door down and I want a reflection of the door in the water down below because I'm going to do some very simple water. And I'm going to, I wiped off the top and bottom again, more of that simple wipe off technique. And I've got just the window, I only pressed that window portion so I could get a bare reflection there. And then it's just a matter of doing the pumpkins and turning them in different directions, et cetera. Same technique for them is to just color them with the markers. And I'm using some sticky notes for masking and these are not cut out fancy sticky notes. I just tore chunks of them and covered up most of the area that I didn't want to stamp in. And it was really easy to mask that way without having to stamp it, cut out all the way around and fussy cut the image, et cetera. I also wanted a moon in the sky. So I debated whether I would just draw one with a pencil and I thought, you know, that's going to take time to erase it. So I'm just going to cut one out of some masking paper, some eclipse tape, and then just paint the sky itself. I'm using Kansan XL watercolor paper because I tell people it's better for new people who are getting into stamped watercolor to use Kansan XL marker will move a little bit easier on it. But boy is it a hot mess when you're trying to do a background like this. Just getting it so that there weren't blossoms and stuff in it. It's just nearly impossible. But you know, it is what it is. So I just used an overall gray that I was that I had scribbled onto my piece of scrap acetate and use that as a palette. And I'll do the same thing here. Use it as a palette to paint the pumpkins in gray. This is going to be a very monochromatic kind of card. I don't do many spooky cards, and I was thinking this would be really cool if it was very dark black. It was really rich, really contrasty, and this paper just doesn't do it. The combination of markers with the Kansan XL, you'll just never get it to be dark unless you use a different medium with it. So if you want to get that kind of a look, then use a different medium. But nonetheless, I was this far, so I wanted to keep going, painted the overall color of the water first, and then wanted everything to dry because I needed to stamp the trees and I needed them to stamp on something really dry. So again, I'm going to use the same masking technique. I'm going to grab some sticky notes, cover up the pumpkins so I can just stamp the trees, and then they look like they're behind the pumpkins because the pumpkins are covered up. So masking, I know a lot of people think of it as really hard, but it's just a matter of thinking of what area is in the front, and then anything that's in the back gets pushed to the back by being masked out of the things that are in the front of it. So it just doesn't show through those things. So next up is really simple, it's just doing the painting portion of Art Impressions watercolor, just applying water right over top of the stamped ink that's here, so that's the only color that's ending up in the trees. You could of course take more from your faux palette and add more to the trees. And then for the water, I just made some lines that get thick and thin, so it looks like it's a little bit shimmery. I wanted the ground to get really dark and I was having trouble getting that to happen. And with the whole thing, I wanted it to be more contrasty. You guys know me in contrast. I will add some more contrast in my final step later though, because I just couldn't handle it. I just wanted to do more. So I got out a pen, and I got out a Micron pen. Pens work really well in Canson XL because the paper is smooth. That's why it doesn't work great for watercolor, because watercolor likes having that texture, so it will move along the texture of the paper. So the flip side of that though is that any kind of doodling portion that you do on Canson XL is going to work great. So I decided to add on more branches on my trees up above and then down here at the bottom I just darkened the land by doing some horizontal lines to increase the contrast in that. And then I looked for other places where the stamping got soft, because when you use as much water as I do, when you do your stamped watercolor, you'll lose some lines here and there, but it's real easy to add them back in, especially since I had all this other line work on the image. It was one whole picture that felt like it was drawn with lines rather than stamped. And then I added some stars to the sky, which I think turned out looking more like snow. So I think I made a combination winter slash fall card. I'm not really sure. You can be the judge. You can let me know in the comments down below if you find that to be a winter card instead of a fall one since I added the white dots to it. Anyway, I wanted to let you know there's also over on my blog, a whole collection of all of my art impressions stamped watercolor stuff over there, so you can go check that out. There's also all the jumpstart classes on sale during the month of September because it's back to school time. So if you've wanted to take up a new medium, this would be an excellent time to do something like that because you can get a discount. I will see you guys later. Have a great week and I'll see you on the flip side.