Well, after taking most of the month of August off, I am ready to get back to it! Fall is one of my favorite times of year. I always feel energized and ready to start new projects. It must be those many years of starting school again in September...
This project is one that is made from a stamp I purchased from Paula Best during the Heirloom Stamp Festival held in June in Springfield, MA. A sample was on display, and I was really intrigued by the technique and the result. So I finally found some time and played around with it myself.
The stamp itself has a mosaic-feel to it, and it is the size of an A2 card front. The image is shown below; it is a series of tiny squares, some filled in, some open, some filled with a small design. The basics of the design are to stamp and embossed the image in white, on vellum. Then, on the back side of the vellum, you color in with markers. I used my favorite bright colors from the Stampin' Up! collection. It is a bit tedious- but ultimately pays off!
To create the design, after embossing, and on the back side, draw a large block image. For example: a heart, or a leaf, or other large blocky, image. I found that shapes with detailed edges do not work- the edges get lost.
Then, color in the image itself with one family of colors, say greens and blues. Outside the image, use complementary colors, such as reds, oranges and yellows. The result is shown below.
For this version, I used an opaque white ink (StazOn Opaque White) and embossed with a clear, detail (i.e. "fine") embossing powder. You can see in the close-up image - shown below - that the embossed portions have sort of a glassy, translucent quality to them.
On the second version, I used the Stampin' Up! white craft ink, and SU's white embossing powder. The result is a much more "white", much more opaque embossed image. I also found that the white SU embossing powder does not lend itself to reproducing very fine lines, so the embossed parts are just a bit thicker on the card shown below.
And a close-up is shown in the picture below.
Hopefully you can see the difference between the different embossing powders in these examples. Personally, I like the more translucent one (at the top) better. But that's not to say I don't like the one with the white embossing powder.
The other thing I learned, which is, in hind-sight, pretty obvious: the more transparent the vellum, the better the effect. I started with a vellum that was pretty heavy, and you could barely see the color coming through the image.
I'm ready to play with lots of different embossing colors, and different images!! How about you?
Keep creating!
