a handmade christmas

I really do love the Christmas presents that I made for friends and family this year. I knew that I wanted to make something as my gift, but wasn’t sure what. I came home after work in early December to my lovely roommate Sara crafting at the coffee table. She was making these beautiful Christmas cards with a strange colored dust, stamps, and what looked to be a souped-up blow dryer. The process she was using is called heat embossing.

I loved the craft and decided to make personalized embossed note cards.

There are a few steps to creating the cards.

Materials needed (I purchased all of my material from Paper Source)
-clear or colored stamp pad
-stamps of your choice
–embossing powder
–embossing powder heat tool
–note cards (I bought these ones from Target)

How to
-Stamp the stamp onto the ink pad and then onto the paper (I used a clear stamp pad, but you can also use a colored ink. It will depend on how you want the final product to look. I used clear ink and then put metallic embossing powder on top of it so only the powder color  shows. If you use a colored ink, you can put some of the more opaque powders for a different effect).
-Sprinkle the embossing powder onto the ink.
-Shake off the ink so that all of the stamp outline is covered.
-Use the heat tool to melt the powder. This only takes a few seconds.
-Ta-da!

A couple of notes.
-I did not have success with the “twinkle” embossing powder. The metallic powder looks much nicer.
-The letter stamps that I bought were hard to work with because they are all individual letters. Especially with the clear ink, it was very hard to get the letters to line up straight. If I tried to do words again, I would opt for a slightly tinted ink or a better letter stamping system.
-Stamps are expensive! Look out for them at thrift stores or buy them on sale. Ebay always has them available too.

I love wrapping in twine.

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