{Craft} How to emboss

Embossing is such a fun craft! I don't actually use it to make cards but rather to embellish labels or paper party bag. The stamping gives a very unique and personal feel to the items and the embossing bring a touch of shimmer or gloss that looks amazing.

For the Disney Frozen movie night, I ordered some cardboard snack trays. I thought it would be easier for the children to hold all of their food items.
The trays are plain Kraft, so I needed something to make them pretty ! I have a box of snowflakes stamps so I immediately thought of embossing them with snowflakes. Unlike normal ink, the colour you get with embossing is solid, so it stands out well on the dark Kraft background.

I also got a large alphabet stamp set from Oriental Trading. The letters are quite big and just the right size for the side of the tray !

HOW TO EMBOSS

You don't need to invest a lot to start embossing ! The main tool required is a heat gun, which is sort of a straight hair drier, but the air blown is a lot hotter.

Then you need a little embossing kit:
- Embossing ink (it is a transparent ink that act as a "glue" for the powder)
- Embossing powder in the colour and aspect of your choice (they come in a wide range of colours, and aspects can be solid, metallic, glittery...)

And finally some stamps.

How to:

NOTE: You should work on top of a clean sheet of paper so as to make it easy to retrieve the left over powder.

1- Choose a stamp, ink it with the special embossing ink (use clean stamps if you don't want the ink to end up dirty like mine...) and stamp on the item to emboss.

2- Sprinkle embossing powder until the design is completely covered.

3- Tap the item so the excess powder falls down on your worksheet. 

4- Heat using the heat gun until you see the powder melt. This only takes a few seconds. Make sure all parts of the design are melted.

Use the worksheet (folded in two works well) to pour the excess powder back in the container.

Enjoy the beautiful glossy result !

Disclosure: All opinions are my own. Items for review were provided by Oriental Trading at no cost. 

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