Painting Flames.

Aight, I can paint and make it look good (as good as a rattlecan can look ;P) But I want to tape off and paint flames on my truck but how would I go around doing this. coz thinkin about it when I go to sand the area before paint, and to wet-sand. wouldent it mess up the masking tape and stuff. Dun wanna repaint and re-clear the whole thing. But I wanna sand and wetsand so it looks good.