Emboss, Emboss

Hello Stampin' Friends. First off I want to share a blog with you today. A lovely stampin' friend from the UK has started her own blog. It's called Cards for all Reasons. She does the most beautiful cards and pretty much sticks to the CAS style. I will put her blog on the side bar so you can access her readily.

Today's Ways to Use It challenge was to use heat embossing.

Embossing has never been my favorite technique, probably because I've not done it much and hate to drag all that stuff out. Now I keep my heat tool handy and it's not so bad. I still make a mess with the powder and seem to have it all over my work table when I'm finished. I'll have to work on that.
First card here is from a piece from the UFO (UnFinished Objects) box. I did have to break bad and ink up a stamp to do the background and the sentiment.

The tree was stamped in Handsome Hunter and I had used the Chocolate Chip marker to color the trunk. I used the VersaMark Pen on the branches and sprinkled the white Embossing Powder, heat set and voila! I had a snowy tree! The tree is matted on Handsome Hunter. The punching is a little funky because I used the punch in the corners and didn't like it. I cut off the corner & outside scallop. It gives it a little different look and I liked it.

I created a snow storm on the card by inking the little snowflake from the Short & Sweet set with VersaMark and embossing all those snowflakes. I used the soon to retire, Sage Shadow, for the card base. The sentiment is part of a stamp from an old Christmas set, To You & Yours. Snowy trees always make me feel peaceful.

While I was working on the tree card, I kept thinking Emboss Resist. I had seen so many beautiful cards done with this technique and had always thought I would try it but didn't. I have a goal to only use stuff from the UFO box and I had these flowers stamped from the Eastern Blooms stamp set. Since I needed a card base for them, I figured it would be ok to ink up the branch from the same set and do an emboss resist with it. Boy am I glad I did. I really love how it turned out.

I inked the branch with VersaMark and stamped it randomly on a white card. I sprinkled a good coat of White Embossing Powder on the card (and on the table, oh my!) then heat set it. The hardest part of heat setting such a large area is to make sure all of it is set before you stop. I let it cool a bit then sponged Certainly Celery and Baja Breeze (new color) ink all over the card. When I was finished, I took a paper towel and wiped off the branches. The ink doesn't stick to the embossing!

I found this darling center for the big flower in my gem box. I have no idea where it came from. A big pearl would do too. By the way, the large flower is punched with the 5-Petal Flower Punch. I used textured Pacific Point (new color) & Certainly Celery behind the flowers. The sentiment is from the Level 1 Hostess gift I showed you a couple of posts back. It's called Because I Care.

I'm glad I tried this technique. It was really fun to see the colors emerging and I love the effect. I'll surely do it again.

Don't forget to check out Sally's blog.

Hugs to all,
Bonnie