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Before I read this thread, I had to make several graduation cards for local kids. Their school's colors are purple and gold. I am sorry, but there is almost NO WAY you can do gold without embossing! I used some pretty retired SU gold ribbon and emobossed the congrats, graduate stamp from one of the all year cheer sets on eggplant (which I think is the current best purple). I accented with marigold morning and it looked great!
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I absolutley love embossing! I've been getting into using more techniques and accessories recently, and embossing is one of my favorites. I embossed on a couple birthday cards for co-workers, and everyone loved it - they want me to host a craft night and teach them all how to make cards!
__________________ Ellen View My Gallery If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag.
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I also love to emboss. Love the heat system and the dry embossing. I've gone through phases: heating everything; pulling out my light table for everything. Now I pick and choose because there is definitely a place for both.
A lot of times I want a more intense color that you get with craft/pigment ink but not the shine of heat embossing. I'll just heat set the color without the powder and love that look, too.
Before I read this thread, I had to make several graduation cards for local kids. Their school's colors are purple and gold. I am sorry, but there is almost NO WAY you can do gold without embossing! I used some pretty retired SU gold ribbon and emobossed the congrats, graduate stamp from one of the all year cheer sets on eggplant (which I think is the current best purple). I accented with marigold morning and it looked great!
True enough but there's no way I'm embossing in gold ever again due to a huge project of wedding invites, thank you cards, orders of service, place cards, etc... every single item embossed in gold. Yes it was back in 1999 but the mental scars remain... and have, in fact, lasted longer than the marriage itself. :rolleyes:
Embossing was the first technique I learned and it was a magical moment for me. Nothing that I've learned since then can take the place of gold metalic embossed letters on a Christmas card. Embossing is also very helpful as a border when you bleach or watercolor the spaces in between embossed lines. So, for me, the embossing technique will never go away but I don't use it as often now because I've learned so many other techniques that help to provide that needed wow factor.
I want to love to emboss and am now getting into it, but I have trouble deciding what to emboss. (Maybe it is just a decsion making thing.) I want to, I just don't.
I embossed the Filigree BG on black with holographic glitter for my save the date cards for my wedding. The was a year ago, I only emboss when needed right now! I love the look of it, and that project made me launch my crappy heat gun and get a nice SU heat gun. When I first started I embossed on every single card, mostly b/c I only have the ColorBox pigment inks from the LSS. Ditto on the gold, I love SU Gold Glory, I had a hard time finding a "true gold" color EP that didn't come out all "antique gold" looking.
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I do not need another horse
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Well, obviously embossing isn't a "beginner mistake" given how many people on this thread alone love it, LOL! I do think that it's the most impressive stamping trick ever and hooks a lot of beginners--did me, that's for sure. But like several above have already said, I overdid it early on and got a little "burned" out on it. Now, it's one really cool trick in my bag, not the only trick, and I love it!
I can't believe I embossed today! :o As I said yesterday on this thread, it was messy and time consuming! And I had to use red sticky tape because I embossed the BG. :o :o But I love the results. I guess sometimes you just gotta spend the effort and emboss! :mrgreen:
Scroll down to the third card and see how unusual embossing can be! This card used to be posted on here, but for some reason, Kim took it off. I think it single handedly sparked a huge demand for Wild Wild West! She is one of my favorites artists! http://www.nuttnhoney.net/WildWildWest/index
__________________ IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII*IIII* IIII*IIII*IIII* Take only photographs, leave only footprints.
Another vote "for" embossing...heat and dry. It does take time and can be messy, but since getting one of those nifty trays from Michaels and a paint brush to help clean the tray, I've been in love.
I love and still emboss both ways too. Some cards need it, some cards don't. Just depends a lot on the card and what I'm doing, and what look I'm going for, I guess.
I love to emboss images after I've colored them. It makes the colors 'pop' and protects the image. I just cover the whole image with Versa Mark then use one layer of clear EP. It gives it a slight pebbly texture, too.[IMG]//www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif[/IMG]
Art is intended to provoke an emotion from a total stranger. If you�ve succeeded in this, consider yourself an artist. Paper Shanks Blog. Love me or hate me, you are still talking about me
Art is intended to provoke an emotion from a total stranger. If you�ve succeeded in this, consider yourself an artist. Paper Shanks Blog. Love me or hate me, you are still talking about me
I emboss quite a bit, though not on every card. Usually I'm embossing in very basic black, white or clear. My heat gun is always set up (because I get impatient waiting for ink to dry, too) and its really quick to shake it on, shake it off, pour it back in the pot ... heat & done. Maybe because I'm not usually doing sparklies EP's (although I love them!), that I don't think of it as a "special effect". There's not a lot of "wow" in it for me - its just a another tool emphasize a certain line or phrase. I don't dry emboss though. I can never decide if I'm going to use a plate enough to make it worth buying it.
__________________ Darci "Awww, you guys made me Ink!"
"Creativity is a continual surprise" (Ray Bradbury)
I agree about the laziness part. I should emboss more because I love the look, but it is messy and requires clean up. I vehemently oppose clean up! I do it when I am working on a special project, but now I hardly even demonstrate it any more. Just lazy!
Heat embossing for me is usually a mess. I get the powder everwhere, burn something (usually me) and am really picky about all those extra spots even though I use an embossing buddy and paint brush to make the image as clean as possible.
But I do like the effect very much--I just find that I actually use techniques that are quicker for me to produce cards/pages in my limited stamping time.
Kelle
I totally agree! I love the look but I'm so picky about getting it just right so I often don't take the time to emboss! (I don't love the mess either!)
I still get happy when I see the powder turn shiny. I guess it doesn't take much to amuse me. I don't use it as often, but am always happy with the results when I do. Eileen
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Well I find myself using my prismacolor pencils more now and I have a problem coloring over the embossed outline. Anyone else have this problem? Am I doing something wrong?
I used to emboss ALL THE TIME...and then stopped because it was a pain...recently, I have discovered VersaFine and Super Fine Embossing Powder...I am LOVING it again!
This thread really got me to thinking. Why do I no longer heat emboss when I used to do it all the time? It struck me that I now have a reliable, hyper-black ink that doesn't need to be embossed to not run. I now exclusively use Vivid Onyx Black ink for all my watercolored images. Before this ink, I discovered that the SU black ink is a flat, dull black and that it bleeds when water hits it, so the only other alternative at that time was to do pigment ink/embossing ink and heat emboss the image.
Like others have mentioned, heat embossed images are lovely when they turn out well (and horrid when there are speckles of powder where not intended). That being said, there are a lot of steps involved to creating a heat embossed image and there always a mess to contend with (if not from the powder, then the clutter of all the "stuff" needed to do it - scrap paper for powder catching, embossing buddy for static, special ink, powder and then the clean up of the stamp from using the special ink. Lazy, I am!;) Just my 2 cents....
I don't hate embossing, I think it's beautiful but I'm just lazy, I guess as I rarely do it. Sometimes you just hafta but it is a mess! Also love the Dazzling Diamonds glitter but it's a bit of a mess also! Jan
I still love to emboss. In the "old" days they didn't have inks for watercoloring and you almost had to emboss. Thankfully we have so many choices now. Nothing beats metallic embossing or some of the fun techniques out there where you use embossing.
I love the look of embossing but I do it in spurts...I'll go weeks/months and not do any embossing and then all of a sudden I think about it and go crazy with it for a bit. As for dry embossing, I like the look of it but don't do it much at all by hand but I do put templates thru my wizard. I just don't have the patience to do much of it by hand.
I LOOOOVE embossing! I think it's such a classy look. BUT...it has to be done right and not messy with specklies everywhere. I use a brush and an x-acto knife to clean up any strays. I usually just use detail black or clear. It's especially nice to emboss the message on the front of a card
After reading this thread--I now need to emboss again!! I guess I am just with everyone else--messy and time consuming--but maybe tomorrow I will dust off my heat gun and dig out my powders and have some fun!!
Thanks for inspiring me!!
i agree with you all. Gotta love the powder turning shiny!
I think part of the problem with heat embossing is that it takes a bit finesse & can be finicky. Most people give up on it before they even get close to understanding it.
I was one of them, but was converted after doing a wedding project.
I had to heat emboss addresses on over 150 envelopes. I got the hang after doing about 25 wrong envelopes.
Now I can't get enough. No better way to get a little wow then use a little embossing powder
Heat embossing is great!! But, I don't do it much because my stuff isn't always at hand. Someday, someday, perhaps I'll have a proper area. The dining room table only holds so much and sometimes, I just don't feel like taking out the box with the embossing stuff. ;)
I don't emboss because I'm too impatient - I hold the gun too close and warp the paper, and end up not liking the results. Sometimes, though, when a technique requires it, I pull out the old heater...just not very often. Though the funny thing is...I have a project on my desk right now that I was thinking earlier of embossing on in white...hmmm...
I've always had trouble with heat embossing, never been able to achieve a perfect finish so I just gave up!! I DO love the effect though and always promise myself I'll revisit it someday to see if I can perfect it.
