Category Archives: Dry Embossing

Glitter Christmas Tree Card

Sticking with the Christmas theme, here is a really bright glittery Christmas Tree card.

Glitter Christmas Tree Card

What you will need to make this card:

  1. A6 Luxury Pearl White Card Blank
  2. Pearlised white card or Plain white card
  3. Dreamweaver Stencil – Christmas Tree
  4. Stickles Glitter Glue – Green
  5. Stickles Glitter Glue – Red
  6. Gold metallic marker pen
  7. Season’s Greetings Peel Off Sheet – Gold
  8. Double Sided Sticky Tape
  9. Light box, masking tape & embossing tools
  10. Craft knife, pencil, ruler & cutting mat

Instructions how to make:

Measure and cut a 120mm x 85mm rectangle from the pearlised white card. Place the stencil on the light box and secure in place with some small pieces of masking tape. Place the card rectangle over the stencil lining it up so the image will be central and secure that in place with more masking tape. Switch the light box on and trace around the stencil design with the appropriate size embossing tools for each section pressing firmly but taking care not to slip. When finished carefully remove the masking tape and turn the card over for your embossed Christmas tree design.

Using double sided sticky tape on all four edges of the embossed card rectangle stick it to the front of the card blank leaving a space at the bottom for the peel off sentiment.

Place the Season’s Greetings gold peel off sheet onto your cutting mat and using your craft knife carefully make small cuts to separate the word Season’s from the word Greetings so they can be used separately. Remove the separated wording from the peel off backing sheet and stick along the bottom of the card blank as shown in the picture.

Using the gold metallic marker carefully colour the star and pot sections of the embossed image. Allow to dry.

Using the green stickles glitter glue carefully colour the tree sections of the embossed image and using the red stickles glitter glue carefully colour the baubles on the embossed image. Leave the card flat in a safe place to dry for a few hours.

Card Idea by Janine

A Guide to Dry Embossing

Dry embossing, sometimes also known as relief embossing or cold embossing is making a raised design on paper, card or vellum with an embossing stylus tool tracing round inside a stencil.

What you will need to get started with dry embossing:

Dry Embossing Equipment Required

  1. A light box – you will find it useful to backlight the design you are doing, without a light box it is very hard, if not impossible to see the stencil design through the paper/card.
  2. A set of embossing stylus tools – these are metal tools with balls on the end that press into the paper/card. Ones with comfortable grips are best as pressing down with an embossing tool for a long time can be uncomfortable if it digs into your hand.
  3. Heavy paper, card or vellum – heavier paper or light to medium card works best as thin paper can rip quite easily, vellum also works very well.
  4. Embossing stencils – these stencils are usually made from brass or silver coloured metal.
  5. Masking tape – to fix the stencil and paper in place, it needs to be a tape that will remove cleanly once you are finished so it’s a good idea to test the tape you intend to use first. A specialist craft masking tape designed for the job is always best.

How to dry emboss:

Place your stencil on the centre of your light box with the side of how you want the finished design to be facing down and fix it in place with a few strips of masking tape. Take care to ensure the tape does not overlap the stencil design. The particular stencil used here is a Dreamweaver Stencil – Christmas Tree.

Stencil taped to light box.

Place your paper, card or vellum over the stencil and secure the corners and sides with more strips of masking tape. Switch on the light box so you can clearly see the stencil design behind the paper.

Card taped over stencil

Then carefully trace around the inside of the stencil design with your embossing stylus tool pressing firmly but taking care not to rip the paper. Each embossing stylus tool has different sized balls on each end so choose one that best fits the size of your stencil or experiment and choose the one that creates the best effect. You can either trace just the outer edge for an embossed outline image or the whole area of each stencil piece for an entire embossed image.

Once you’ve finished carefully remove the tape and turn the card/paper over, the design you traced is now raised i.e. embossed into the paper.

Finished dry embossed design

You can either keep it quite simple and use the design as it is or you can colour it with Twinkling H2Os, acrylics, chalks, metallic marker pens, glitter or glitter glue. You might want to keep the stencil in place while you apply colours but you can also colour your design freehand after the stencil has been removed. Experiment with colouring the whole design in one colour or mixed colours, or you can just highlight one part of the design.

If you do use any wet colours such as paints or glitter glues make sure you clean your stencil in warm soapy water before the paint or glue dries onto the stencil.

Tip: Why not try some hand drawn designs on vellum without stencils by placing the vellum on a craft mat and pressing the embossing tool in to draw little swirls, holly leaves, stars or hearts etc. With white vellum the embossed bits turn solid white in colour which is a nice effect.

Technique guide written by Janine