Ombre heat embossing

Heat embossing is such a cool technique and one way to add such a big impact with very little effort. In the Altenew Academy’s class: Impressive Heat Embossing, the instructor demonstrated quite a few ways to up the embossing game. One of the techniques she showed was using different colors of heat embossing on one image. For today’s card, I used this idea along with Altenew’s Happy Days stamp set and die to make two cards. The Altenew Happy Days stamp set is a smaller set but has great sentiments for Anniversary and Wedding events. Please read along for how I put together these cards.

On a piece of Neenah 80lb solar white card stock, I stamped the main image in VersaMark ink after prepping the cardstock with an embossing buddy bag. I then put Martha Stewart Antique Gold embossing powder on the top of the image and used a dry brush to remove any stray gold powder from sections of the image I did not want gold. I then added Recollections powder in Marine and to the leaves and stem, added Martha Stewart embossing powder in evergreen. Using a dry brush I made sure to sweep away any stray bits before heating the powder with a heat tool. I made a second flower the same way except omitting the blue embossing powder.

These images from the Happy Days stamp set are open images. There is a layered stamp to add color to the main flower but not to the flower bud or leaves/stem. I decided to use Altenew watercolor brush markers to add some color and shading. These are new to me so I have been practicing with them. Be warned, these lay down a lot of intense color. I ended up squeezing some of the color from the brush onto my palette and using a waterbrush to pick up the color and apply it.
For the flower and bud I used: Sea Breeze and Persian Blue. For the leaf and stem I used: Moss, Limeade and Mountain Mist. After letting the image dry, I added details using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. I used darker shades and then blended out the color using a white pencil on the flower and cream on the leaves. Using just a little of the colored pencil adds a lot of detail in the long run. I also find that as I am new to watercolor, I tend to lose shading and highlights. The colored pencils allow me to add those shades and highlights back into the image.

Now that I had these great looking flowers, I had to figure out how to ground them on the card. I used Gina K card stock and cut down one 81/2×11 sheet to two top folding card bases and spritzed shimmer spray onto the front panel.  I ran a piece of Neenah Solar white cardstock through my Cuttlebug with a  Cuttlebug Paper Lace 2 embossing folder. I then used a Hero Arts Heart Die to cut out a heart in the middle of the white embossed panel. The edges of the heart and the negative space panel were edged with a Krylon Gold Leaf Marker to add some finishing touches. The heart was adhered to one card base and the negative space was adhered to the other card base using Gina K connect glue. The sentiments on both cards are from the Happy Days stamp set and were heat embossed using the same Martha Stewart Antique gold powder. The flowers were stacked and then adhered to the card fronts. 

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this card inspired you to try embossing with different colors on the same image. Another way to try this technique is stamping in different colors by masking and then using clear embossing powder over the whole image. This way you do not have to have a ton of embossing powder colors in your stash. Have a crafty day.