Hello crafty friends.

I’ve got something quite different for you today. I’ve been making faux tiles from paper to decorate my cards.

The first pair of cards use stamping and embossing. The ’tiles’ need to be precut first for this technique. I first laid my background colour onto the tiles. I used brush blenders to add a little teal distress ink to the edges of these the tiles, and then stamped the background image from Mixed Media 2 onto each tile, and embossed in gold powder.

Then, to turn it into a tile, I pressed the whole tile into clear embossing ink and then dipped it into clear embossing powder. I did this a couple of times. I used WOW ultra high embossing powder. This powder has larger granules, which makes the layers build up faster, but regular clear powder will work just fine.

You will notice that the gold powder ran just a bit. When you heat the embossing powder, the gold powder below it melts too, so you have to be careful to keep the tile flat and not let the melted powder ‘flow’ too much.

This next card was made in the same way, with two small variations in technique. Firstly, instead of brushing on ink to make a subtle border, I swiped the whole red ink pad across my paper until it was vibrantly coloured. Next (once it was absolutely, definitely dry), I embossed the leaf background stamp in silver, and then dipped the edges of the tile onto my clear ink pad, and then into the silver embossing powder to give a silver border.

The next two cards were made using die cuts. I used the Paper Rose Scribble Hearts and cut a pink heart. I used Distress Oxide to colour the paper, but if you have cardstock in the colour you want, the result will be similar. I glued the heart to a red tile, offsetting it slightly, and repeated the clear embossing process. The ‘I love you’ is from the Hello clear stamp set.

This final card uses the Vine Background die that I cut in gold before layering it with deep green card. This was the trickiest tile to emboss, as it had so many nooks and crannies. In the end, I scooped small quantities of powder into the small corners where the clear ink pad couldn’t reach, and carefully embossed them from the bottom of the card so the powder wouldn’t fly away. The ‘celebrate’ sentiment is from the Sentiments 2 stamp set.

These cards were a lot of fun to make, so why not give this technique a go?

Until next time, keep having crafty fun. If you’re interested in seeing my other creations, feel free to have a look here.

Blessings,

Donna