MASKING TAPE BACKGROUND

I have been looking at Trish Bee's wonderful site at http://techniqueszone.wordpress.com/ and been inspired to try one of her background techniques which involves tearing off pieces of masking tape,, sticking them to paper or card and then inking over the top. As luck would have it, I had a roll of ultra-sticky “well-past-its-use-by” masking tape in my craft lair which helpfully kept breaking while I was ripping pieces off. Anyone who knows me is aware that I just hate throwing things out, so this project was a perfect way to use up an otherwise useless product. (And no, I don't expect its acid-free or archival).

I stuck the tape to a piece of 200g card and instead of inking, painted over the surface with some Kaiser acrylic paint (brown made with a lot of red, a bit of yellow and a teeny bit of black). This seems to give a more subtle end product than the ink. I ran out of paint and had no way of matching the colour (as I had not, of course measured it), so I made a second brown mix with the same colours but reversing the quantities of red (this time just a little) and yellow (lots). 

You can see the first (darker brown) example without embellishment. I ran the yellow-brown through my Cuttlebug (favourite toy of all time) using the Couture Creations “Fretboard” embossing folder. I then coloured the nail-holes silver and the joints between the boards brown, using pens. The nails look OK but I wish I'd left the joints alone. I might try going over them with a darker colour.