Embossing

Embossing

Embossing can be done many ways.  I’m going to talk about 4 different ways to do embossing: wet embossing, dry embossing, embossing with paste and embossing with punches.

Wet embossing takes some practice.  For this process, you’ll need a rubber or acrylic stamp, an embossing stamping pad, glitter and a heat gun.  Once you pick your stamp, instead of using ink, you’ll use the embossing stamp pad.  Place the stamp on your card or scrapbook page and make sure to get the whole stamp.  The next step is to pour some glitter over the stamp making sure to cover the complete area as evenly as possible.  The best way to do this is to put your card on a piece of paper and pour the embossing glitter across the area.  Once you’ve covered everything, tap the card to remove excess glitter.  It is important that you get all excess off, or once you heat the glitter, the excess will be stuck on the area as well.  Finally, grab your heat gun and gently heat the glitter.  When the glitter is melted, you will see the change in the glitter to a thicker consistency.  Be careful not to overheat the paper as it will warp.

Dry embossing is a little easier.  You’ll need embossing paper, a light board and an  embossing tool.  It is very important that you purchase embossing paper and not scrapbook paper because it is thicker and you are less likely to punch a hole through the stencil.  Tape the stencil

on the light board using removable tape.  This will ensure that you’re stencil stays in the same place.  Use the embossing tool to trace thru the open spots on the stencil.  Once you have completed this process, remove the paper from the light board and turn it over.  You will see the raised area where you traced on the stencil.  Next, you can either use colored chalk, colored pens or pencils to add the desired colors to enhance your stencil.  Then, cut the stenciled area out

leaving about ¼” outside the embossed area.  Now you are ready to glue them to your scrapbook page or card.

Embossing with paste takes a little more effort to get right, but the results are well worth it.  Pick a stencil made especially for embossing with paste.  You’ll need to tape the stencil onto the card stock making sure you outline the entire stencil with removable tape.  This is extremely important if you have areas on the stencil near the edges.  The tape helps to prevent the paste from getting on your card by mistake.  Take the tool that comes with the paste and spread it evenly over the stencil.  Make sure the paste fills all areas.  Begin removing the tape from the stencil starting with the last piece of tape you put down.  Be careful to pull the stencil straight up so as to not smudge the paste.  Rinse off your stencil right

away.  The paste will take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes to dry completely.  Once dry, tape the stencil down and line it up exactly as before.  Grab your paint dobbers and start painting, making sure to completely cover the pasted areas.  Finally, remove the tape again and lift off the stencil.  Painting all areas can be difficult if you have overlapping parts.  Don’t worry if the first one doesn’t work out, it takes practice.

Embossing stamps are fairly new additions to the world of punches.  These are really easy because you use the stamp like you would a punch, except the embossing stamp doesn’t cut your paper.

As you can tell, embossing can take many forms.  They all take some practice and just know that you will make mistakes.  It’s not a perfect art form.  It’s time to try something new…..embossing!