Crafty As L

The Design Team were tasked with providing some Halloween Tricks & Treats (aka tips & tricks) and I chose heat-embossing as it’s one of my favourite crafting things to do.   (Ink blending is the other and, as you’ll see later, they are the perfect bed fellows!)   When I first started trying heat-embossing, I had many epic fails; some were due to my lack of knowledge and others were using the wrong equipment.   Hopefully, these tips and tricks will get you on a successful heat-embossing journey. Embossing Tools To heat-emboss, you will need a heat tool.   There are many makes of heat tool; some have one heat setting and others have two, a lower heat for drying and a higher one for embossing.   Another tool which I think is essential is an anti-static powder tool.   They are inexpensive and last for years.   Mine is called an Embossing Buddy and is a small sack of very fine powder which is rubbed or dabbed over the card before stamping. ...

  It’s time for my Visible Image Design Team post and this week’s theme is Halloween and my brief is CAS - clean and simple.   I’m using the lovely pumpkins from the  Happy Halloween stamp set as I don’t really use them at any other time.   Maybe I should try to remedy that?! I wanted to speed up the colouring of the pumpkins so decided to experiment and use black card for them. First, I used Versamark to stamp and clear heat-emboss the small pumkin. Covering the small pumpkin with a mask, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the large pumpkin. For the colouring, I used Finetec watercolour metallic paints in orange for the pumpkin and green for the stalk.   The embossing resists the paint so you don’t have to be super careful about not going over the lines.   Once the paint had dried, I quickly fussy cut the pumpkins. For me, a CAS card has to have a reasonable area of blank space, in this case white, but I didn’t care for leaving it all blank.  ...

I thought it was about time I started on my Christmas cards since I haven’t done the same as last year which was making a few each month.   A recent purchase were some dies from the Tim Holtz vault release and this week I’m using the snowman from the Winter Wishes set. First, I die-cut enough bits to make four snowmen.   The scarves and hats are formed from two pieces so I added a darker shade of ink to the skinnier pieces for some dimension. Next, the pieces were assembled and the little snowmen came to life. The snowmen were going to sit on a snowbank and I wanted the sentiment to be heat embossed in silver on this.   This fun font sentiment is from Joy To The Woods by Lawn Fawn. The background sky was an inky sheet made using various shades of blue Distress Sprays and Spritzes which I’d chopped into 4” squares.   I heat-embossed Lawn Fawn’s Snowy Backdrops in white on each square. The panels were to be mounted on 5” card blanks, which I decorated by st...