Bonus Special - Polished Stone/Embossing Technique

Yes, I decided to do another tutorial. I've been wanting to do a tutorial on the "Polished Stone" technique but because I have to take my own pictures, it's hard to do it with one hand on the camera and the other on the card. I posted a few cards with the Polished Stone/Embossing Technique on my "Card Inspired" blog site as well using the Water Color Garden stamp set and another stamp set (just can't remember which one right now) . Click here for more card samples.

For this reason I've been avoiding it but I decided to do it today! The pictures aren't a good depiction of how the cards look like in person because once again, I'm taking the pictures with no flash and low light and the pictures don't come out the way I want them to. I'll take pictures of the finished cards tomorrow in daylight and repost them.

This will be a four category tutorial. One on the polished stone technique and three on the embossing portion.

Here are the tutorials:

Materials

Rubbing alcohol
2 to 3 different colored ink refills or reinkers ( in this case I used Baroque burgundy, Green Galore, and Positively Pink)
Cotton ball (the less cottony, the better - the cheap cottons work best)
White Glossy Cardstock
Metallic reinker (optional - for the cards I created I did not add the metallic ink because I didn't have one handy at the moment). Click on the title of the post to be directed to the SCS tutorial using the metallic reinker.





Soak your cotton ball with the rubbing alcohol. I, normally dip the cotton directly from the alcohol bottle but I can't take a picture and tilt the bottle at the same time so I dipped from the cap.



Apply approximately 3 drops of each reinker on to the alcohol soaked cotton ball. When I say 3 drops, I mean to drop the ink on to the same area, not 3 separate drops for each reinker. When done, you should have only 3 dots on the cotton ball - one for each color.

In a up and down motion, ink the white glossy cardstock using the alcohol inked cotton ball. What you should see are multi-colored dots which appear to blend into one another creating a marbled appearance.

The end product should appear similar to this - a multi-colored marbled background.

Embossing portion of this tutorial:

Materials

Versamark ink

Loving Heart stamp set

Tray for the embossing powder

Glittery embossing powder (in this case, I mixed burgundy colored fine embossing powder with fine gold glitters)

The finished "Polished Stone" cardstock

Heating Tool

Ink the large heart from the set with the Versamark ink and randomly rubber stamp the marble cardstock.

Apply the glittery embossing powder and heat emboss the images.

The finished product should appear like the picture below. It's very glittery and stunning in person. It's hard to see this effect with the picture below.

Third part of the tutorial:

Materials

The same glittery embossing powder used in the previous tutorial

Versamark ink

Positively Pink Classic Ink

Sponge

Large heart stamp

Scissor

White matte cardstock

Using the Versamark ink, ink the stamp an stamp two images of the stamp on to the white matte cardstock.

Apply the embossing powder and heat with the heating tool.

Cut out the images.

Sponge Positively Pink ink on to the white portion of the stamped images. If you prefer, you could use Positively Pink cardstock instead of white cardstock but I hate wasting my good cardstocks when it's going to be basically covered up with the stamped image. Set the cut images aside.

Last step:

Materials

Positively Pink and Baroque Burgundy cardstock

Small heart from the Loving Heart stamp set

Versamark Ink

The same glittery embossing powders from the previous tutorial

Heating tool

Burgundy colored 5/8" organdy ribbon

Tape

Ink the smaller heart stamp using the Versamark ink and randomly stamp the Positively Pink cardstock, apply the glittery embossing powder, and heat with the heating tool. Shadow the edge of the cardstock with the sponge using the Positively Pink Classic ink. Finally mat on to Baroque Burgundy cardstock.

Tape the edge of the ribbons on to the back of cardstock, tie a bow to the front and mount the two heart images using foam tape on to the finished design.

To finish up the card, mount this front design on to the marbled cardstock using foam tape and finally mount on to a card base as shown in the final product below. Add any additional embellishments as you desire.

All done! Whew, sorry that it's such a long tutorial but for many beginner stampers, it helps to show all the steps. More advance stampers don't need all of the steps but as a courtesy to the novice stamper, I wanted to demonstrate every aspect of the card's creation.

Try it out and I'm sure you'll love the end results!

Until later. . .