Deep Impressions with Repeat Impressions Stamps

It's a brand new year and today is my turn at the Repeat Impressions blog to share a Project of the Week. Last summer I watched a demonstration of the Deep Impressions technique by Fran Seiford of Stampendous and was fascinated with the texture achieved with embossing powders and rubber stamps. Since then I have played with this technique many times and I am sharing what I have learned here with you today. We start with a shape cut out of chipboard. You can use dies to cut a shape, but I have used Repeat Impressions stamps instead. The key is to pick a die or stamp that is not too intricate. I chose RI's large butterfly, hot air balloon, large and small balloon silhouettes and the Metro Map stamp.

You will need a teflon hot sheet (I used one from Ranger), extra thick clear embossing powder (from Ranger or Stampendous), various colored embossing powders, an electric griddle, rubber stamps and some utensils. Once you have used the griddle and utinsels for this technique, they should not be used again for any food preparation.

Place the cut out chipboard piece on a teflon hot sheet on an electric griddle pre-heated to 300 degrees. Cover the piece with a layer of extra thick clear embossing powder (Ranger or Stampendous) and let it melt. You can cover it with a glass cover to speed the melting. Once melted, sprinkle on your choice of colorful or aged embossing powders or enamels. I chose Aged Scarlet, Aged Black and Gold Glitter embossing powders from Stampendous for the butterfly on the card above, but in the picture I used Aged Teal, Turquoise and Steel Blue Glass Glitter from Stampendous. Let those embossing powders completely melt.

Move the completely melted piece over on the teflon mat to get rid of some of the excess melted embossing powder and then remove the teflon sheet with the chipboard piece from the electric griddle with a large spatula. Immediately stamp the molten piece with a rubber stamp. That is what creates the beautiful texture and deep embossing of the piece and does not harm the rubber stamp. In just a few seconds, you can remove the stamp and your piece is done. Here are some more pictures of the process with RI's hot air balloon using Aged Hunter and Fresh Green Crushed Glass Glitter from Stampendous:

After the deeply embossed pieces have cooled, you can make cards or mixed media or art with them.

On my first card, I created a background with Repeat Impression's Metro Map stamp on a rectangle chipboard piece using Shabby Blue embossing powder from Stampendous and a blue sparkly embossing powder from Recollections. I heated them following the directions above and then stamped RI's Metro Map resulting in the great texture above. I created the butterfly as described above and added some black gems before attaching to the card. The sentiments on both cards are from the Big Boys Toys collections.

On my second card, I masked the sides of a white card base with temporary tape and sponged the strip with light blue dye ink. Then I stamped Repeat Impression's Postcard background stamp before removing the masks. I created the hot air balloon as described above and stamped it with the same stamp while the embossing powders were molten. The large and small balloon silhouette stamps from Repeat Impressions do not have any detail as they are silhouette stamps. So I stamped them on chipboard, cut out, and applied several layers of beautiful colored embossing powders to them. While molten, I stamped each of them with the Metro Map stamp. Here is a close-up picture showing the great dimension of each of them:

I had so much fun going deep with this fun technique and Repeat Impressions stamps. I hope you give it a try.

I am entering these cards in the Anything Goes challenges at 613 Avenue Create and Cute Card Thursday.