The Aviary: Technique Tuesday: Iron-Off Embossing with Watercolor

Hello! It's Kristie Larsen here... I'm excited to be joining you for my first blog post as a guest designer for Paper Wings Productions!

Today I wanted to show you a fun technique that I love to use: Iron-Off Embossing with water-colour. I used this technique for my CAS card above, but I will show you step by step how to make it work for you whether you like scrapbooking, ATC, journal art or card making. This technique is fun regardless!

You want to start with a few supplies right at your fingertips. You will need some Versamark ink, clear embossing powder, an embossing gun and your regular ol' clothes iron (without water) and of course water-colour paper! You also need your Paper Wings Productions stamp of choice. I chose to use the gorgeous Tile Pattern clear stamp. Mmmmm, how I love it ; )

Now let me tell you why I love this stamp.... one word: Versatile, with a capital V! I love its size because you can use it perfectly on an A2 size panel and it creates a perfect frame around it. Or you can cover small spaces or continuously stamp big spaces. There's not a place where you can't use it. It's just perfect!

Step 1: Trim a piece of water-colour paper to standard A2 size. Stamp image with Versamark ink and heat emboss with clear embossing powder.

Step 2: Secure your embossed paper onto your table (I used washi tape... it's so pretty!). Be sure to secure the edges so the water doesn't warp it too much. Because of the nature of the stamp I chose, I also masked off the edges of the images so no colour would get into my 'white frame' around the stamp.

Step3. Now watercolor to your hearts content! Here I used 3 shades of Peerless Watercolor to create an ombre effect. I'm impatient so I dry it quick with a heat gun.

Step 4: Cover your dried stamped image with a scratch piece of type paper. Using your iron set on med-high, iron over the scratch paper. It will melt the embossing powder underneath and lift off the stamped image leaving only the water-colour.

You can tell you have it all off if you bend it in the light and all the shiny embossing is gone. What is revealed is a gorgeous watercolored image and no glossy powder. I love the effect! It's so stunning but not too shiny.

Step 5: Finish off your project! I trimmed my panel down a bit more and popped it up on a card base. I love the look of white on white! I then used some die cuts to create my sentiment and adhered it over the top of my ironed-off image. And my new card was born!

You can also use your favourite Paper Wings Productions stamps to make an amazing background on any size piece of paper. Below I made another card, but since I used single images, it would be easy to adapt it to a bigger scrap page or even custom stamped paper for an altered item! I used more of my favourite stamps (can you have too many favourites?!) These are all images from Vintage Technology.

After stamping and embossing my images I made a pretty mess with three different water colours. I ironed off my powder and then used the panel as a starting off point for a more elaborate look. I used the Solid Whimsical Alphabet set to stamp in grey ink along the centre diagonal of the panel and then used the Sacred Geometry set for some circular designs along the top right corner. If you look really really closely you can see I used the Tile Pattern stamp again in a pale blue along the bottom lefthand corner. I wanted to do the exact opposite of my first card and get some real layering going!

I used some stencils and some water spritz to lay over another ink layer on top. I fussy cut and watercolored another camera image from Vintage Technology and added a sentiment from it on the bottom right of my card. I trimmed my panel and justified it down to the bottom right hand corner leaving a trim of white card base peeking out on the left/top side.

See how great?! One technique that can be used in so many ways that the possibilities are endless! It is so much fun to do this technique because you get really inky and can spend an entire evening in stamping bliss! Ironing has never been so much fun. Trust me!

Thanks so much for joining me. I hope today brings you a breeze of inspiration from an unexpected place. Keep you're eyes open!

xoxo
k