Tag It at PanPastel UK and Reverse Masking

Its been an extremely busy weekend post wise with two yesterday and again two today, I would love you to take a look at the previous ones if you have time. My vintage cabinet card album and tutorial, shabby chic configuration style box and tag card.

So Welcome to my second post today which is for PanPastel UK and the theme for the challenge this week is ‘Tag It’. I have made two tags and a tutorial for you (I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s one) which demonstrates one way of using PanPastels to create a reverse image when using a mask.

My tags started off brilliantly for this theme, but half way through I was thwarted at every turn. Let me explain.

I made 2 tags to show how you can create the positive and negative images using a mask with PanPastels (See video tutorial below for the explanation to get to this point.) Because I had used pans through the dotty mask I needed to seal it so I could continue working on it. The only problem was I had also stamped with black archival ink and look what happened.

The ink bled. The tin doesn’t tell me what is in it (it is soooo old) but there must be some acetone or similar to do this. So the question was do I start again or do I try to retrieve the situation. Always a problem solver I set about making changes to the tags by first giving a light wash of gesso. But this wasn’t strong enough so I coated the text areas with white acrylic paint. The writing still showed through so I then decided to add picket fence crackle paint, Guess what?

Yep all the crackle flaked and fell off. Still not to be outdone, I gave those areas three coats of acrylic paint (learnt this in Andy’s class) and covered it again with the crackle paint.

Ah that’s better, most of it stayed on this time. So I set about adding the elements to finish them off and actually I am quite pleased with the outcomes. Not what I had expected, but then I never finish with what was in my head originally lol.

Here is the tutorial if you would like to try the reverse masking technique I have devised. Have fun.

I believe you learn from your mistakes as well as your successes, so I hope you have learnt something from my experiments. I certainly did.

Supplies -
PanPastels, Gesso and masks from Your Creativity Store who are our regular sponsor
Sizzix vintage mini telephone and typewriter dies.
Ideaology and tissue tape.
Tim Holtz crackle paint
Fixative

Well it's been a busy week getting four posts ready for this weekend but I hope you have enjoyed some of them. Thanks for taking the time to join me. I will be off in about an hour to the Craft Barn again and Lucy (True Colours) is coming with me. It was lovely to meet up with Julia (Julia's Stuff) and Alison (CraftyTrog) on Friday and I hopefully will see them again today. I also had a lady called Glennis introduce herself to me who is one of my followers who has come all the way over from New Zealand, that was an amazing experience, I might see her again today too. And then there was the lovely Gio all the way from Italy. She is demoing so I will definitely stop by her table.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs {brenda} x0x