Hi, Oddies! Suzanne here, sharing a tutorial to get even more from your Some Odd Girl stamps with masking!

If you’re new to masking, SOG critter stamps make it fun and easy to start! I used one of the raccoon stamps from the “Love Bandit” clear set for the first part of my tutorial.

To get started, round up some washi tape, your favorite ink, a clear stamp, and a permanent pen that works well with your preferred coloring medium! I usually color with Copic markers. I’ve used black Copic multiliners and Micron fine tip pens to draw in details, and am happy with both brands. If you have another brand that you use and are happy with it, that works, too!

Before you mask, make sure that your stamps are clean, or some leftover ink might come through when you stamp the masked image on paper. I use small pieces of washi tape and cover the eyes before inking the stamp, as you can see in this photo. 

Don’t forget to take the washi tape off before you stamp the image onto paper! I remove the tape with tweezers, because the inked part won’t get smeared. Here’s what the regular image looks like compared to the masked one:

To customize the image, you can draw in closed eyes with an arch or connect the lines near the mouth for a new expression:

And here are some examples of the colored image with different facial expressions:

When you feel comfortable with masking, you can take it to the next level and layer your images with props.

In this part of the tutorial, I’m combining an elephant from the “On Safari” clear set with the coffee cup from the soon-t0-be-released “Hipster Mae” clear set, which you may remember from the sneak peek last month on the SOG blog!

I want the elephant to look like he’s holding the coffee cup in his trunk, so I’m using the clear guide sheet included with the stamp set to figure out how much of the elephant I want to mask and where I want the coffee cup to go. 

I masked the right side of his face and part of his ear where the images overlapped. I’m masking part of the cup before I stamp it, because I’m going to draw in part of his trunk on the right side and I don’t want the lines on the cup to be in the way.

Of course, you can always stamp the images separately, cut them out, and layer one on the other, but using this technique gives you the look of a seamless, single-layered  image!

Here’s how it looks after all of the masked pieces come together, compared to the separate images:

 Here’s an example of a finished project where I used this technique. It’s a card that I made last year for an SOG challenge using “Foxy.”

Cool, right? I hope you enjoyed my tutorial today, and I hope it inspires you to get creative with your SOG stamps!

And, don’t forget, there’s still time to join in our February Misting (and/or) Masking challenge! You’ll find all of the challenge details HERE on the SOG blog!

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Thanks so much for stopping by today!