How to Heat Emboss with BetterPress Plates | Season’s Greetings Christmas Card Tutorial
Hello, crafty friends! Marie here again from Marie Nicole Designs. I am sharing a Christmas card (never too early for Christmas!) and I will be walking you through step-by-step on how I used a Better Press plate to heat emboss with. Heat embossing with Better Press plates is not really hard at all, and it gives more technique options for using your plates.
Let’s get started!
PREP YOUR CARD FRONT
Decide what cardstock you want to use for your card front. I embossed a frame onto this cardstock using one of the Spellbinders embossing folders. There is a perfect spot in the middle of this frame for our sentiment to be the focal point.
BETTER PRESS IT
Grab Season’s Greeting Upright Italic press plate and place it on your Better Press platform. Make sure to align the plate with your cardstock so that it will be pressed into so that it is centered the way you prefer.
Once the Season’s Greetings plate is on the Better Press platform, add some embossing ink to it. Since embossing ink is clear, you may not see it on the plate, but trust me, it's there.
Add the clear plate with your cardstock onto the Better Press platform and run through your machine. Since the Better Pressdoesn’t press as hard as a die would in order to cut, you can have a sentiment imprint without ruining your frame that was embossed with a folder.
Remove the card front from the platform, and you should now see the sentiment imprinted into the cardstock. The embossing ink will still be wet so be careful not to touch or smear it.
HEAT EMBOSS
Using your preferred embossing powder (I used gold), sprinkle it onto the sentiment and tap off the extra. You may even use a dry paintbrush to clean up and embossing powder hanging onto areas you don't want it.
Hit the embossing powder with your heat tool to melt the powder and set your sentiment.
After the heat embossing is finished, use a pair of scissors and carefully cut out the embossed frame around the outside edges.
WORK ON THE BACKGROUND
Since the framed sentiment is slightly smaller than the full card size, you will need a background to mount it on. Grab a piece of white cardstock and ink blend a color. I chose a lighter red and then layered a darker red over it to get just the right Christmas-y hue I was looking for.
ADD SENTIMENT WITH FOAM ADHESIVE
Apply foam adhesive generously to the back of your sentiment frame. Remove the foam backing paper and then center and stick to the ink-blended background.
ADD DETAILS AND EMBELLISHMENTS
I wanted to add some detail to the frame, so I grabbed a paint marker and colored the middle embossed strip around the frame gold. I love how the gold sentiment and the gold paint both shine so nicely.
Go ahead and add an embellishment or two from your stash. I used this little poinsettia from a previous Spellbinders set, and then added a few gold pearls.
The card’s focal point is mostly the sentiment, but I love how Christmas-y it turned out.
Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today to see the Upright Italic Season’s Greetings on this card! I hope you’ve gathered some ideas and inspiration for your own crafting.
Until next time, Marie Nicole
Mistakes happen to every cardmaker, from beginners to experienced crafters. This comprehensive guide shares practical solutions for fixing common cardmaking mistakes, including stamping, die cutting, foiling, BetterPress, ink blending, stenciling, coloring, heat embossing, and more, so you can confidently rescue your handmade cards instead of starting over.
Hello, cardmaking friends! It’s Mona Tóth here, and I’m so happy to be back on the Spellbinders blog. Today, I’m sharing a Christmas step-by-step card tutorial featuring the Polar Friends Stamp and Die Set by Simon Hurley. This card was inspired by the Christmas advertisements I remember seeing on television when I was a child in the 1990s. They often featured polar bears surrounded by...
Hello, crafty friend! I’m Adrienne Boese, better known online as Alice Scraps Wonderland. I love a good interactive scrapbook page! It can be something as simple as a pocket or something more intricate like a waterfall mechanism or flips. Today, we are going to focus on one of those simple techniques - a pocket! It’s the perfect technique to dip your toes into the interactive...