That is so much fun - finding items that were never intended to be concrete molds and making them perform! I am including a link to some of my photos of this very kind of thing! grins Vicki Here is a link that might be useful: Working w/ masks and other strange molds

Simplest suggestion I think is for you to Google create mask using...................., the dots will be where you will type which ever graphics program and version you use. This will bring up many answers so you really need to look through for ones written in a style you are comfortable with. Some tend to be too wordy while other assume you are familiar with rocket science so finding your comfort level is helpful.

Thanks! I spend summers on the Garden side of the forums. I also have a seasonal business and am seldom home until winter. Then I am housebound doing paperwork; that's when I launch new home decorating schemes¡Kor continue where I left off last winter! It's nice to know someone noticed I wasn't around! There were an awful lot of projects left hanging. My paint for this dining room with the border is a year old now: hard to believe I've lived with the clashing colors where my old DR color (raspberry) meets my kitchen color (dark seafoam green) for that long. Not to mention the pile of stained woodwork in the basement so-called "playroom", or the new front door standing up in the home office. Surprised the family hasn't gone on strike. I used the brown paper with a post-it-like adhesive on the back before, and I did have bleeding. I found the best use for that is not when masking off a part of a flat surface: it works great for the ceiling where it meets the wall: where 2 surfaces meet at a right angle. My husband would always hit the ceiling with the roller before when painting the walls. The brown tape is wide enough to take care of that problem. I will look for the delicate surfaces tape. les917, I see what you mean by creating problems if using the acrylic trick, with pulling off the tape and damaging the edge of the border paper. Come to think of it, I think they were using that only when masking a painted wall surface: no wallpaper involved. Good thing I asked here first!

You might try getting one of those carbide scrapers, annika s, one of the pull kind, probably 1.5" wide or so. Easier and less mess than sanding down those ridges. Try to figure out just the right amount of pressure to take off the ridge without gouging the surface too much. You'll still have to do something to smooth it out afterwards, maybe hit it with that fine sandpaper at that point. Personally, I'd probably skim-coat instead, but it it a bit tricky for a beginner, so maybe sanding would be good enough. A good skim-coat would leave a more uniform surface than sanding the old paint, however. If you want to try skim coating, I'd recommend the powder-type (mix with water) drywall mud. I think it's called E-Z sand. I prefer it because it drys faster and doesn't shrink as it drys. Use a 12" knife. It won't go on very thick, just because of the thin consistency of the material. If you don't like the finish, give it another coat when the first one sets up enough. The best professional advice I ever got on finishing drywall is "it's all in the angle of the knife". It's not a simple as it sounds, but once you get the feel for holding the knife angle just right, getting a good finish is much easier.