hello thank you for joining me today I'm Amanda Fowler of inspiron Lincoln and in today's video we're going to be heat embossing this lovely peacock on a greetings card now today's video was inspired by one of my customers Janet hi Janet who was telling me the other day that she was having trouble with heat embossing so I thought I'd put together this quick card to share this with all of you and hopefully to help her to with her embossing so what I'm going to be using today is the perfect peacock stamp and also the watercolor wash background stamp and for the heat embossing I'm going to be using Versamark ink now Versamark ink is absolutely one of the key things that you need if your heat embossing it's a really good ink it's got glycerin in it so it makes it really sticky so Versamark ink and embossing buddy this is a little pouch that has a like a talcum powder in it that really helps stop getting bits of excess embossing powder everywhere a silicone mat to protect your work surface and gold embossing powder now this is this is the the Stampin Up powder and what I'm going to do is I'm going to sort of show you a bit of a close-up all embossing powders are not created equal you want an embossing powder that's really fine because what that what the the finest means is that you will get the definition from the stamps it also seems to melt quicker and just looks better and I might be a little bit biased being stumpy of demonstrator but stamping up embossing powders are fabulous so this time I'm actually using gold and you will need a heat gun so letter let's get started I'm using thick whisper white card which I have scored already just to make a card blank I'm good this water color wash background stamp it's brilliant you're not that confident doing water coloring this gives you the effect but with a stamp and a good use pool party ink I'm just going to go all over the stamp with the ink now because it's such a big stamp and because it's pretty much covering the whole of the card what I'm actually going to do and fold the card and I'm gonna place it where I want it the card stop like that and then we're going to bring up my grid paper and then I'm just gonna rub over the top that means then I'm not getting ink all over my fingers but I'm getting a nice even pressure up so there you can see it's brilliant now this ink will still be a tiny bit wet so if I put and Boston powder on it now it's gonna stick to the the pool party ink so that's one of the reasons I'm using the embossing buddy and I'm just going to rub over the top and what that will do is it will make sure that that ink is really dry and nothing else is going to stick to it so here is the perfect peacock first to mark ink all over and I'm going to position the over the top so I'll just give it a really good press down it's quite a large stamp and it's really detailed so you want to just make sure it's got plenty of pressure lift it up and you you won't be able to see anything because obviously the Versamark ink is clear they're not we're going to put the powder all over the top doesn't matter how much powder you put on because all the excess if I show you all the excess we'll just tip off now you need to give the card a really good flick finger and finger and thumb and that will get rid of all of the excess powder now with the embossing buddy you shouldn't get any little stray specks but if you do if you haven't gotten them busted in buddy or if you do then just get a dry paintbrush or even you can use your finger just to dust off any tiny bits of excess powder and put it on your silicon mat for the heat in heat guns when you use your heat gun you have to remember and I know my customers always laugh when I say this but it's not a hairdryer okay these aren't really hot so the ends get really hot but they don't blow as much air as a hairdryer does but the reason I explained that it's it's not a hairdryer is because a lot of people when they're heat embossing they waft their peak on all over the place and quite often that scatters the powder and it makes it melt unevenly in all sorts of things so what I want you to do when your heat embossing is be couple of inches three inches away and hold your heat gun over the top of the area that you're melting and you'll be able to see cuz I'll put a close-up on this so as it melts you just move the heat gun slowly over the whole area and until everything is melted now I'm not going to be able to talk over the heat gun so I'll keep quiet for a minute and you just watch how it how it melts and then I'll explain a bit more okay so the whole image now is embossed and you'll you'll be able to see that we've got this beautiful raised raised effect and it's really super shiny and very lovely now sometimes when you're heating your embossing you can end up with a flat image or it looks like it's sunk into the cardstock now that's usually because you've overheated it so keep an eye on it and perhaps practice on some scrap pieces of paper and things just so that you are happy and confident with how your you're melting the powder and actually it's an experiment what you could do is do it as much as you think you should it and then do another one and overheat it and you'll actually be able to see the difference so all I'm going to do now is put a sentiment on here I'm just going to use the just for you this is watercolor wings but it's just the words that I want today that's my little block and some bermuda bay so that is the completed card I hope you've enjoyed today's video on heat embossing if you have any questions or would like more information please leave me a comment below on youtube or send me an email at Amanda at inspiring inking comm I always respond to them and if you've got some suggestions and videos you'd like me to make I'd love to hear from you you can find more creative inspiration and to be able to purchase their nifty items that you've seen on today's video by going to my blog www.smilingcolors.com