Opacity masking in relation to color separation for screen printing

[flatlatex]

This is probably simple pilot error:

I have a black stroke design created in Procreate, import to Illustrator and Image Trace/Expand. Add a fill color to one or more sections of the design. Open an opacity mask texture and 'paste' it over my design. Select the mask and all the elements underneath, Transparency -> (Normal/100%) Make Mask. Works perfect - the texture is successfully applied to the design. Here's where I'm stuck. I want to color separate the design for screen printing - layers for each spot color, etc. How do I get the texture to 'stay applied' to the separated elements? The texture is acting like a mask over the image, but not actually 'punched through' the elements. When you direct select an element and drag it off the artboard, there is no texture and if you 'ungroup' you release the texture. What I want is to color the elements of the design, apply a distressed texture, etc to the entire design and then be able to separate the individual colors off to separate layers to print transparencies to burn screens AND the individual colors/elements to retain their specific textures. Long explanation for what is probably a simple solution - sorry for the long-winded question. Thanks in advance!

[Larry G. Schneider]

Make a copy of the file and then use Flatten Transparency on the copy. See if that does what you want.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I tend to agree you probably need to flatten everything, but in the meantime, the part about this that concerns me (without seeing a file) is the Spot color reference. This may be complicating the use of effects as they tend to need to be done in other color modes.

If you have a small section of it a sample file, one of us can look at it and advise.