Embossing – a little bit different

Here are two old techniques that I did years ago when I started out rubber stamping hand made greeting cards. They’re still useful techniques and easy to do. All that is needed is a heat gun, some embossing powder, and some way to color the results.

The photo on the left shows three cards, but I have a confession to make: the vertical card in the back is a card I made a few years ago, and I don’t remember the stamp set I used.  However, the red and black card in the left front uses the same technique . I wanted to create another card similar to the “mystery” card using the flowers from Southern Serenade stamp set from Stampin’ Up!, but I ran out of time. It would have been pretty, though, if I had gotten it done.

Anyway, Here’s what you do. We’ll start with the blue and white dandelion card. Here’s a close up picture of it.

I’m using the Dandelion Dream stamp set, CLEAR embossing powder, an embossing buddy, Versamark ink, white card stock, pacific point card stock, a sponge dauber, and balmy blue and black ink pads. Oh – and the sentiment is from the Very Vintage Stamp set.

 

Instructions:

• Start with a piece of white card stock  3 3/4 x five inches. Rub the embossing buddy all over the surface to remove oils from your fingers and so you won’t get stray bits of embossing powder where you don’t want them.
• Stamp the dandelion image in the card stock with the versamark ink pad. (It’s really not ink you know – it’s glycerin.)
• Take a scrap piece of copy paper, fold it in half, and place the card stock on it.  This is an easy way to catch the embossing powder. Pour CLEAR embossing powder all over the card front. You can use all of it that’s in the little jar if you want to – we’re going to pour it back into the jar. You just want to make sure you have the entire image well covered.
• Flick the back of the image to remove any loose powder, and pour the rest of the powder back into the little container. Having the fold down the middle of the scrap copy paper makes it easier to do this.
• Now take your heat gun, turn it on and let it warm up for a few seconds. Holding it about four inches or so above the image, heat the embossing powder. Moving the nozzle of the heat gun in little circles helps to prevent scorching the paper. (There aren’t too many things that you can’t repair, but scorching the paper is one.) You will see the embossing powder begin to melt. When it’s all melted, turn off the heat gun.
• Now comes the fun part. Take the sponger dauber – or a sponge, doesn’t matter – and tap it on the blue ink pad. You want to avoid having darker blue spots. A relatively even coverage of color is the goal. Once you have some ink on the sponge, tap some off on scrap paper and then tap the color on your image, starting in the middle. Keep doing this, working your way through and around the image and  the background, until it pleases you.
• Stamp the sentiment in the lower right corner with black ink. I thought it needed a little bling, so I added three metallic sequins to the card front. Rhinestones might look good too.
• Glue this to the blue card stock – it measures 4 x 5 1/4 inches, and then glue the whole shebang to the card base.

DONE!

Here’s a picture of the next card, which also uses the same dandelion stamp.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what you need for this one: dandelion stamp, WHITE embossing powder, embossing buddy, Versamark ink pad, pear pizzazz card stock, poppy parade card stock, black card stock, poppy parade ALCOHOL marker, pretty label punch, smallest oval die from the layering oval framelits, Wink of Stella,  black ink, and  the sentiment from the Very Vintage stamp set. (You COULD leave the sentiment off if you wanted. I liked it both ways.)

Instructions:

• Start with a piece of black card stock. The finished size of mine is 3 3/4 x 3, so anything bigger than that will work. You can cut it down to size later. Use the embossing buddy the same way as explained above.  It is even more important to use it when working on black card stock, because stray embossing powder will really show up.
• Stamp the image, and emboss with WHITE embossing powder using the above instructions. Heat set the embossing powder same as above.
• Now for the color. Take your alcohol marker – any color you have, really, and color over the white embossed areas.  If you don’t stay on the lines it’s no big deal, the ink won’t show up on the black card stock.  I used poppy parade (it’s the first one I grabbed from my alcohol markers), and then old olive for the stem. Which is why I chose the card stock colors  that I did. If you have a different color of alcohol marker, use that, and change your card stock colors to match. Unfortunately, regular markers won’t work with this technique.  They will color the white embossing all right, but they won’t stick.  They rub off.
• When you’ve got everything colored, take your Wink of Stella and go over everything you colored. It really makes a difference and adds that little “something.” 
• Now cut your black card stock to measure 3 3/4 x 3 inches. Your next layer is 4 x 3 1/4. Glue them together. The third layer is a tiny frame, so it measures 4 1/8 x 3 3/8. I know, I know – measuring 1/8″ is a pain. Until you get used to it.  But that little frame sets everything off. Use Tombow Multipurpose to glue this one, because it gives you a little wriggle room to get the tiny frame even.
• Finally glue the whole thing to the card base. There are wide margins on the card base, so take your time to get them even. Using the multi-purpose glue helps.
• If you want to add the sentiment to the lower left, punch out the green label with the Pretty Label punch and a scrap of pear pizzazz paper. Stamp the sentiment on another scrap of white, and then run it through the Big Shot with the smallest oval. It’s easier to stamp first and then center the oval around the sentiment. Glue the oval onto the center of the punched label, centering it nicely. Affix it to the lower right area with dimensionals. I put some Wink of Stella as a border around the label, but I’m not sure I like it.

That’s it.  We’re DONE!

If you wanted to make a card like the vertical card in the picture, the technique is the same. The measurements are: black panel – 2 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches; tiny calypso coral frame panel – 2 5/8 x 4 5/8 inches; blue panel 3 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches. The horizontal sentiment is stamped below the panels and centered.

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope you’ll give these techniques a try; they make really lovely cards. And thanks for sticking with me as I learn this blogging stuff. You’re the best!

Happy Stamping!

Blessings, Carole