Embossing, Day Two: Resist Embossing

Welcome back! Today I'm going to go over an embossing technique that uses heat emboss from the previous post.

To start this project you need the usual suspects of paper, ink, and stamps. Look for a stamp that has lots of surface to it, not something that is nothing but itty bitty lines. For the embossing portion you'll need "detail clear" embossing powder, versamark pad and your heat tool. You'll also need a brayer, or a sponge, or some other means of covering large areas with ink.

Start off with a light color paper, I picked White Daisy because I'm making a card with the Wings paper pack. Stamp your image a couple times (I picked the butterfly and the word "Soar" from this month's Stamp of the Month, "Find Your Style") and cover in your powder. Tap off the excess and apply heat from your heat tool. Take the time to shine a bright light (or just hold it up to the light) on your paper to look for "dull" spots, that'll be spots that the heat tool didn't quite melt all the powder.

Next apply your ink. I'm not adept at using a brayer so mine came out a bit uneven, I typically use a sponge or even run the ink pad over the paper (careful with this one though, if the ink pad is fairly "juicey" it could oversoak your paper!). Edit to add: Because the embossed image is glossy it doesn't "hold" the ink... this is the "resist" part of the resist emboss!

Now I've got white butterflies on Sweet Leaf green paper!

Hint: you can use patterned paper to end up with patterned butterflies on a darker paper (in that case you'd have to use ink dark enough to hide the pattern).

But wait, there's more!! For three easy payments of... no, wait that's not right.

Let your paper dry completely, I mean REALLY dry... and stamp your image again in some of the larger "blank" areas. Apply your powder (this is why it has to be dry, or your powder will stick where you don't want it to) and heat and now brayer or sponge a darker color! I used Juniper, again to coordinate with the paper pack I'm using.

So how cool is that? You now have two sets of your image... white and green.

I did a third layer using black ink for the final bit. Experiment with it. Use your lighter colors first. See how the first butterfly seems to be "on top"?

Tip: if you find that the ink is staying on your image (such as when you sponge) just rub it gently with a very slightly damp tissue or a nearly dry baby wipe. That will take the ink off your embossed image without damaging your paper.

I've done this sort of resist emboss technique before. In that case I stamped a word in a dark ink and then stamped over it with the embossed image and sponged another color over that... leaving the word visible like through a window. My friend Colleen showed us that one, loved it!

Here's one more example of resist. This is a 6x6 layout I made for a consultant swap. The dress form on the left is detail clear, I used white daisy pigment ink to give that smokey look around it before adding a flower. (Sorry the sentiment can't be seen, poor lighting where I was taking pictures!)

Remember that your pigment based inks (like black and white) will stick to your previous layers a bit more, you'll need to clean off the embossed image before the ink dries too much.

Thanks for checking in, I hope you enjoyed today's embossing technique. Please, if there's a particular embossing technique you'd like to see, comment! I certainly don't claim to know about ALL of them and I'd love to learn about new techniques!