Another Heat Embossing Idea

Yesterday I showed you a card made using the Inspiring Iris Stamp Set my daughter bought me for my birthday. Today I have a project using another birthday gift, the Fanciful Fragrance Stamp Set. I love the vintage feel of the images in this set and was particularly attracted to the flowers. I thought they would make a nice focal point for a bookmark. After I’d finished stamping I decided it needed a little gold heat embossing too, and that was when I had an novel idea.

Sepia flower bookmark with gold heat embossed edge created using the Fanciful Fragrance and All Wired Up Stamp Sets from Stampin' Up! #papercraftwithme

FIRST THE STAMPING

I began with a 2″ x 5-1/2″ strip of Thick Very Vanilla Card that I’d punched at the top using the Scalloped Tag Topper Punch.

At the bottom of the bookmark I used Soft Suede ink to stamp the floral image from the Fanciful Fragrance Stamp Set. Then I used a Blender Pen to add a little Sahara Sand ink from the inside of my stamp pad to colour it a little.

Next I stamped the floral image onto a Full-Adhesive Post-It® Note. I stacked it onto a second one before sticking them onto some scrap card. Using Paper Snips I then cut out the floral image (ignoring the stems) so I had one set of masks to use now, and one for another time.

Mask of a stamped image then stamp the background so it appears to be behind the first image.

I placed one set of of the masks onto my bookmark to cover the coloured image. Then I used Crumb Cake ink to stamp the All Wired Up background stamp onto the bookmark. When I removed the masks the flowers now appeared to be in front of the chicken wire image.

A HEAT EMBOSSING EXPERIMENT

It was at this point I decided to add some gold accents, initially just with the ribbon I had chosen. But then I had a thought. I wonder what would happen if I dragged my VersaMark ink pad over the edges of the card and then added heat embossing?

First though I wiped the whole bookmark with an Embossing Buddy to remove any oils and static. Then I held the bookmark and dragged the VersaMark ink pad around all the card edges as if I was sponging them. Next I sprinkled the sticky ink with Gold Stampin’ Emboss Powder and tapped off the excess. Finally I melted the remaining powder using my Heat Tool set on 2 (high).

Close up of sepia flower bookmark with gold heat embossed edge created using the Fanciful Fragrance and All Wired Up Stamp Sets from Stampin' Up! #papercraftwithme

I really liked the effect. It was fairly subtle, but had a randomness about it which seemed to fit with the whole ‘vintage’ vibe.

With that done all I had to do was thread the Gold 3/8″ Metallic-Edge ribbon through the slot at the top and secure it in place with Mini Glue Dots.

If you don’t have Mini Glue Dots to hand, here’s a short video I created showing a number of different ways to attach ribbon and twine to bookmarks and gift tags.

All-in-all I’m very pleased with how my first project using the Fanciful Fragrance Stamp Set turned out. I also think I might just add heat embossing to the edges of more card layers. I’ve no idea why I hadn’t thought of it before.

Do you do anything a little ‘different’ with your heat embossing? I’d love to know.

You’ll find another one of my heat embossing experiments, this time using Saran Wrap (cling film) on a gift tag in my blog post Super Saran Wrap Technique.