Stamp Anniething: Masking and Swapping Heads!

Happy Summer Everyone! Today is the first day of summer here in the USA and in my part of the country, we have been going through a heat wave all week. I think the highest it got was 111 degrees. Yesterday was 100, and today we get back down to about 90. So it's another great day to stay indoors and make some cards! I made this A6 card with two different stamps where I swapped heads. I used the head of Mei Yin - Our Friendship is a Gift and the body of Eloise - Arigato. 

Supply list:

Mei Yin - Our Friendship is a Gift

Eloise - Arigato

Asian Living Stencil Builder

Happy Birthday sentiment from Stacey - Sign Board

Banner Die

Enamel Dots

There are several ways you can do the head swapping. The way I did it was I stamped each image, scanned it into my computer, and used my Silhouette Studio software to swap the heads. I call it digital masking! The reason I did it this way was because I needed to make the body of Eloise a little bit bigger to fit the head of Mei Yin so it was a bit better in proportion. However, it would have also been fine without increasing the size. I think it was just my OCD!

We do have a head-swapping guru on our Stamp Anniething Design Team, Timothy Thomas. He can show you another way to swap heads without using a computer and actually doing the art of masking. Join the Stamp Anniething Facebook Group and watch his video. Here is the link to the video: Timothy's Video

After I printed the head-swapped stamp, I colored it using Copic markers. I used a #5 white Gelly Roll pen and drew flowers on her kimono to match the flowers on the washi paper that's on the shoji screens. I fussy cut her out, leaving a thin white border.

Copic markers used:

Skin: E04, E11, E21, E00, E000

Cheeks: R20

Tongue: R22, R20

Hair: T9, B37, T5, B32

Purple: BV29, V28, V25, V22

Green: YG09, YG06, YG03

For the background, I used the new Asian Living Stencil Builders. I used all the stencils in the set except for the pagoda, which I will save for a future card. I used Distress Inks and Distress Oxide inks to stencil. I first started with the fence, then I stenciled the two shoji screens. Next, I cut out washi paper to fit, stenciled the lines on them, trimmed, and placed it over the shoji screens on the card. 

I then masked the screens and stenciled the bamboo leaves around them. Next, I masked off the screens and fence and inked in the ground. I used a blender brush and inked the sky, concentrating on the edges of the card, leaving a small halo effect around the image to make it pop. To finish the card, I stamped the sentiment and cut it with one of the banner dies and adhered it to the card. 

Thank you for stopping by and hope you give this head swapping technique a try. You can do this with many stamps. Have a creative week!