I love using masks in my creative work, usualy along with stamps and stencils. My thanks to the very talented artist Dina Wakely, who happens to live here in Arizona. She is a wonderful teacher and also runs a mixed media group that meets once a month at The Creative Quest in Glendale, Az. I have used a mask on this postcard by cutting shapes out of a clothing catalog. I cut out three shapes of women in different poses, layed them together and used a paintbrush to pull paint around the edges of the shape. That gave me the shape surrounded in purple on this fabric postcard.
I could have painted or stamped on the fabric first, but after painting, I used a marker to put the quote from Maya Angelou in the center. I used a ginko leaf rubber stamp with Lumiere paint and used a piece of punchinella as a stencil to add more color to this postcard. And finally, with a hair comb dipped in paint, I made those red lines that you see. 
I keep catalogs and magazines and occasionally while watching television or movies will flip through them to find shapes that interest me. I cut them out and might spend a different session painting them with a coat of gel medium so I can use them more than once. If you coat your pieces with gel medium, do it on a piece of plastic so you will be able to lift the piece when dry and turn it over to paint the other side. Sometimes I'll remember to save both the actual mask and the stencil that is created when cutting out the shape - like this woman from an old catalog I had lying around.
That little strip of blue that you see on the stencil is painters tape that I used to reinforce the portion where I cut very close to the edge. I wanted to give it some stability.
I glued the mask to a file folder, coated it with gel medium, cut it out, laid it on a piece of plastic, coated the back with gel medium as well. I also coated the stencil on both sides.
Thank you for visiting my blog. I would love to hear about your adventures with this technique.
