I thought about embossing when I was designing cards because I was thinking about how to improve on them once they had been printed successfully, I looked into foiling too with the printing companies, I think i could have looked into methods of doing this at home but with the printing companies they are able to make it a lot neater and embossed as well. I ordered some embossing powder in the light green colour as I thought it would stand out quite nicely from the darker greens in my work.
So this was the pen that I ordered for it, it was only a couple of pounds from hobbycraft. I tried it out on some plain paper first.
The first photo shows the nearly see-through lettering, which is just drawn onto the paper using the pen. My pen has a choice of a pen or a brush-like end, so its whether you want a flowing line or a more rigid looking design. You then add a generous amount of the powder over the top, and then tip it off, making sure you save as much as possible. This is then how they look in the bottom image. You next need a heat gun.
It is quite hard to tell the difference here but there was a slight lightening to it after the heat gun had been applied for a couple of minutes. I thought this was quite a long time and googled it and a found a little tutorial, that showed the results within a couple of seconds, so I decided to try a different paper, and printed out the front of one of my card designs.
This next example on the happy shows it off much better, the colour difference and the fact that this took a couple of seconds to lighten and visibly look like it was melting together.
I tried one last example here on a different substrate, using the front of my sketchbook to try it out. I think it would look good if I practice my lettering, I used to do calligraphy and I think this style would look a lot better. I also think the powder that I ordered is probably not the best quality, I did not want to spend a great deal of money testing something like this out if it was not going to work. I think a nice gold would look good instead and a better quality would give the finish that I want for it. I would probably order that again if I create something that I would like to put some pattern and texture into.
Tahlia Paige 