Hello everyone. I’m popping in with a second card today, from this afternoon’s Clarity Social TV show when I was busy playing with the Riverside Landscape masks collection. This is a larger card than I usually make (it’s an 8×8), but I wanted to take advantage of the reflection masks so needed space to fit both images in. I’ve used a piece of the Elements Earth A5 card for my background – there are some lovely greeny tones in the pack, one of which worked perfectly.

I first cut the Elements Earth card to a square and then laid the Riverside Bank mask onto it. I found the easiest way to do this was to lay the mask on a piece of copy paper, then apply a strip of low tack tape across the lower part of the trees to anchor the two middle strips, then place it on the Earth card and remove the tape. I also laid the ground piece of the mask set to give me the bottom line of my riverbank (forgot to take a pic at that point!) I could then add colour into the open areas of the mask using the new ink blending brushes – I went with ‘peeled paint‘ Archival for the first coat and added shading using ‘balmy night‘. I have to say, the detail on these laser cut masks is just fantastic – look at those flowers and blades of grass along the edge!

I then spun my card round and lined up the Riverside Bank Reflection mask with my first set of trees – you can see on this one how I used the low tack tape to stabilise it. Obviously a reflection in water is a much paler image, so I went with ‘shadow grey’ Archival this time (although I used ‘salvaged patina’ in this afternoon’s show. Either way, you just need a paler tonal colour.

I lightly brushed the ‘salvaged patina’ Archival ink to the water area to add more of a blue tone – you can see from this first picture that it looks a bit grainy. I worked out that this was because there’s a very fine residue left from the masks (it doesn’t feel sticky to touch), which catches the ink as you brush it. I solved it when demoing this afternoon by lightly rubbing the card with a tumble dryer sheet, which solved the problem and meant I could get a smooth finish. I could then move on to the additional elements for my scene, starting with the duck (there’s a whole page of extra images in the set). I laid the little duck mask onto the water area and popped a bit of low tack tape across him where the water line would be – this covered up his feet, which would have otherwise looked a bit odd! I then used a Spot-on Sponge to pounce ‘vintage photo’ through it for my swimming duck.

I repeated that couple more times, then used the whole mask for a pair of ducks on the riverbank. I popped a moon mask into the sky and lightly brushed the ‘salvaged patina’ across it – that creates the effect of the moon by darkening the card around it.

All I then needed to do was add one of the A5 Tall Feel Good sentiments suing the ‘peeled paint’ Archival, mount my card onto a piece of Northern Lights companion paper and attach it to the 8×8 card blank.

This riverbank looks so inviting after the record breaking heat we’ve had over the last few days – it got very hot in the Clarity studio this afternoon! Paul commented to me during the show that he thought this would make a great picture, mounted on one of of Clarity’s canvas boards instead of a card, and I may try that when I’m finishing off my demo pieces from today.

I’m going to share this with a couple of blog challenges too. Make My Monday are looking for a stencil to be used (I’ve used several masks in building this scene!), while Cupcake Inspirations have gone with ‘anything goes’.