Paper-to-Digi Tone-on-Tone “Heat Embossing”
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3Y74JUO
Faithful readers, I have to thank you once again for your tolerance! So much has happened in the last 6 weeks, my head is still spinning. But I’m ready to get back to normal now.
Where are my paper-scrappers? I’m always looking for ways to bring paper techniques to digital scrapbooking, with the goal of creating realistic dupes. When I was watching a video tutorial with the über-creative Gina K, it never even occurred to me that this particular technique would translate as well as it did, so hang on! I’m talking about tone-on-tone heat embossing, of course! For those who were never paper-creators, let’s explore. Heat embossing is a technique that uses slow-drying watermark or pigment ink, stamps and embossing powders to create slightly raised, slightly (or brilliantly – depending on the powder) shiny embossed looks on paper. The ink is applied to the paper with the stamp, then powder is poured over the ink. Yes… it’s messy! Then the embossing powder is carefully melted using a heat gun. Yes, fingers get singed… unless like Gina, one holds their paper in a clothespin. The look is beautiful, which is why people do it. But how does it work in the digi world, you ask? Let’s check it out.
Gina demonstrated with gold and silver paper, as well as a solid colour so let’s do just that. We’ll start with gold. The cardstock she used had a slight shimmer and this one doesn’t but it doesn’t matter.
The digital version of stamps are Brushes. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, please get in the habit of putting your Brushes on their own layers. First, and most important, by doing this, when you make changes to the Brush, you only change THE BRUSH. For example, I’ll be using Styles to dupe the ink-embossing powder combo; if the Brush is right on the paper layer, when I apply the Style, Elements is going to change the whole shebang, not just the Brush… and you’ll be mad. In addition, by isolating the Brush this way, you can Resize, Rotate and Flip your Brushes for the best effect.
Are you familiar with brusheezy.com? They have millions of FREE, no-pennies Brushes. The one I used comes in THIS set (which isn’t free any more, sorry!). As the screenshot says, you’ll get best results with a Brush with some solid areas and sharp details. THESE ones would be great, too, and it IS free.
There are 3 ways to find your Styles. The long way is to click Window>Styles. The keyboard shortcut is F6, and the quickest way is just to click on the Styles button at the bottom of the Layers Panel.
To see all the Styles that have been Loaded in Elements, click on the bar shown at the top of the Layers Panel. Scroll down the list and find the set you want. Or if the set you want isn’t there, Load it. [If you’re shaky on how to do that, The Style File: Where is It? can help.]
I tried this particular version with several different gold Styles and settled on this one. It came from a non-GS source, so I won’t link it here. I wasn’t able to find anything suitable in the GS shop, but maybe we could ask for one!
Wut?! Look at that! I think it’s just a bit too thick – the paper method would need several coats of ink and embossing powder and nobody’s got time for that! But it definitely is pretty!
Shaving some of that Bevel is super-easy in Elements. Just double-click on the fx icon on the Brush layer and the Style dialog box will open. First thing I like to do is make sure the Lighting Angle is the same as the rest of my layout so it doesn’t make the brain scramble. Then I slide the Bevel slider to the left until I like the result. I went from the default 20 pixels to 6 and it’s a lot less in your face.
I followed all the same steps for this silver version, only this time I was able to use a GS product! It’s a Karen Schulz Style set. The result could use a little deflation… kinda chunky.
This time I did something a little different. I went literally tone-on-tone. You can see the red Brush against the red paper, and it’s a nice look. Changing Blend Modes might make it really spectacular, but that’s not what we’re doing today.
The closest to a heat-embossed look for this example was to apply another Karen Schulz Style set, this time Glass. [We’ve used that set before.]
Just for kicks, I tried the gold Style on the red.
And the silver one too! I think I like it better than the gold.
Really, the possibilities here are endless.
