Inspire Me Monday: Resistible Embossing!

Hello all! Did you enjoy the Happiest of Holidays Release -- part deux? I sure did! I love this time of year when I can take my time and really enjoy the upcoming season. There’s no better time for a card maker than.... CHRISTMAS! Yet, with this beautiful season, I sometimes struggle. How do I create “mailable” cards to send holiday smiles across the miles? So today, I’m taking some time to show you how -- with a little creative coloring -- you can add the appearance of depth on a flat creation!

LET’S GET STARTED!

Here’s a peek at what you’ll need....

I started by stamping the beautiful floral spray from Power Poppy’s Poinsettia stamp set with Versamark Ink and then I sprinkled white detail embossing powder over top and then heat embossed the image.

Now comes the fun part of softly framing my image. I tore off strips (from the sticky side) of a Post-It Note and then layered the sticky notes like this....

From here, I grabbed my Copic marker BG0000 and then added shading around the edge of the Post-It Notes and then also around a portion of my Poinsettia...

It's a little hard to see, but when you take off the Post-Its... it reveals itself! You can see, I started to color my image as well!

I used Distress Markers to color up this image because I’ve been told that coloring embossed images with Copic markers can potentially ruin the tip of your Copic marker, so I chose Distress Markers instead. Any water soluble marker would work similarly. I did shade with Copics but tried not to touch the embossing much.

Here’s a peek at the markers I used....

And here’s a look at my finished and colored product! I love the washed out look that the Distress Markers create! I got that look by scribbling the markers onto an acrylic block and then picking up the color with a blender pen. If I wanted more color, I would simply pick up more color and go back over that area of my stamped image!

HERE’S WHERE THE EMBOSSING BECOMES.... RESISTIBLE!

This next part was something I wanted to try to get a muted and more washed out effect. I took my main image, sandwiched it between two pieces of copy paper, set my iron -- yes my regular old iron that I use to get wrinkles out of clothes --  to “cotton” setting without steam and for about ten seconds, I ironed over my image to basically melt off the embossing powder to create the look of a soft resist and also to get rid of the dimension of the embossing powder.

Afterward, I matted up my image with some raspberry pink and blue hues and I added an iridescent bow (which could be ditched if you really want to keep this creation 100% flat).

And here’s a peek at my finished card! I added a sentiment from the Poinsettia set using Memento Rose Bud ink.

And that, my friends, is it! A card that is almost 100% flat that still has depth and interest, thanks to some creative coloring, an embossed resist technique and... your iron! You know I’d rather use that iron for fun things like this! ;-)

Thanks for stopping by! We'll be back with more Power Poppy fun -- right here -- real soon!

~Julie