Impressive Heat Embossing

Hello again, and welcome back! Today's course was all about heat embossing. Heat embossing gives cards the "Wow!" effect and every time a new stamper sees it done they fall in love with it. There are some tricks and if you take Altenew Academy's Impressive Heat Embossing course you would learn more ways to use embossing powders.

In the past I've used heat embossing to do simple sentiments, metalic-look tags, cracked glass, and even made jewelry. There's so much you can do with a heat tool and embossing powders, but the technique I chose to do on this card was to heat emboss with layering stamps. This took some practice as it isn't something I've done before but it does help you look at your layering stamps in a new way.

This card uses layers of heat embossing done with Altenew's Angelique Motifs stamp set.

The Process:

The embossing was done with Versamark ink for all layers, using an anti-static pad between each layer. I used white, silver, clear, and a mixture of clear with teal glitter. I made this  mixture myself as I didn't have the color of glitter embossing powder that I wanted to use.

For the background I stamped the largest leaf spray twice on white cardstock, one stamped only once with Altenew's Crisp dye ink in Dew Drops and the second one stamped twice with the same color. I then stamped over the images with Versamark ink and used clear embossing powder and heat set. This made the leaves glossy. Then I took the third layer, skipping the second layer stamp, and stamped over top of the leaves with the Versamark and added the teal-glitter mixture and heat set. I used a blending brush to add a light touch of Dew Drops ink around the leaves and then wiped off the embossed areas with a clean towel. The piece was cut out with a stitched rectangle die.

I also cut another rectangle with the next larger stitched rectangle die out of an aqua cardstock and placed the stamped background onto this. They were both attached to the front of a white card base.

The flowers in this stamp set have three layers for the petals and more for the centers, and for some of them I did not use all the layers.

One of the smaller flowers was stamped on white cardstock with Dew Drops ink with the first layer of the stamp and then clear embossed over. The second layer of the stamp was embossed in white and the center was embossed with the teal-glitter mixture. It was cut with the matching die and glued down to the card front flat.

The largest flower was stamped on white cardstock and the first layer was embossed with white, skipping the second layer stamp, embossing the third layer with silver, and the center layer with the teal-glitter mixture. I cut this out with the matching die, and also cut a piece of foam with the matching die and glued them together.


The other smaller flower was stamped on vellum. To give the vellum some color I stamped the first layer with Dew Drops ink, and then embossed over it with clear embossing powder. The second layer was stamped and embossed with white. The third layer was stamped and embossed in silver. Finally, the center was stamped and embossed with the teal-glitter mixture. This flower was added to the card front with foam tape.

The sentiment is from Altenew's Heartfelt Sentiments and was embossed on the aqua cardstock in white and foam tape was added for dimension.

As a final touch, rhinestones were added.

A tip I would like to share when working with embossing layers with photopolymer stamps is to clean the stamps on both sides to get good impressions with every stamping as the anti-static powder will start sticking to the stamp and will leave tiny areas on the stamps that will not make a good impression. If the back side of the stamp gets too much powder on it, it will not stick to the acrylic block or the door of the Misti well. These stamps are sticky so I usually take them all to a sink and wash them off well so that there is no powder left on either side of them. (Be sure to put the stopper in the sink!) I hope this helps!