How to Do Heat Embossing on Your Projects
by Anne ~ March 11th, 2010
Heat embossing is a technique that produces a raised image on paper or card stock. It's easy to do, and it can give your scrapbook pages a fancy, professionally done look. All you need to get started is a few simple supplies:
* Rubber stamps
* An embossing ink pad
* Embossing powder
* A tray or piece of scrap paper (to catch excess powder)
* A heat gun
1. Ink your stamp thoroughly.
2. Sprinkle a generous amount of embossing powder over the stamped image.
3. Pour the excess powder onto the tray or scrap paper to be put back in the container. If powder remains in spots that you don't want embossed, tap the back of the page to knock it off or brush it away with a small paintbrush.
4. Sweep the heat gun back and forth over the image until it melts. This will produce a shiny, raised image. Be careful not to overheat the paper or embossing powder so that they do not burn.
Tips and Alternative Techniques
* You can use an embossing marker instead of stamps and an ink pad. This will allow you to emboss items that you write or draw freehand.
* Try different colored inks and embossing powders to produce various effects. Embossing ink is usually either clear or tinted, but pigment inks are available in lots of colors. Unless you use clear embossing powder, however, the ink color will not show through. It may, however, affect the embossing powder's color.
* If you do not have a heat gun, you can hold your page over an electric heat source. But if you use this method, it's important to pay special attention in order to keep the paper from scorching.
* The heat used in embossing will ruin photographs. To prevent this, do your embossing before you add photos to the page. If you're new to the technique, you could do the embossing before you affix anything to the page in order to keep from wasting material if you make a mistake.
* Print a transparency and sprinkle it with embossing powder as soon as it is done printing. Heat it with extreme caution to keep it from warping. Place it over a photo to create the illusion of embossing on it.
* If static keeps embossing powder from coming off of spots where it's not needed, use an anti-static product. Wiping the page with a dryer sheet will also work.
Heat embossing can make an ordinary scrapbook page look extraordinary. Some scrappers are intimidated by the thought of using heat on their pages, but it's really quite simple to get it right. The hardest part is not burning anything, but even that becomes easy after the first few times.
