How to Make your own embossed cards

I will teach you how to make your own homemade greeting cards using some simples materials you can find anywhere! It's a really fun thing to do, especially at Christmas time, and it will save you money in the long run!

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Card stock
• rubber stamps
• embossing powder
• markers, pencils, markers
• heat gun
• glitter
• envelopes

1. You'll want to use a quality card stock. Michael's has AWESOME deals and a huge selection. Remember, this is YOUR creation, so feel free to choose whatever colors, styles, shapes you like best.

2. Pick out the rubber stamps, embossing powders, markers/pencils, and glitter (if you wish to use glitter) that you will use for your card.

3. Carefully stamp your card and immediately pour on your embossing powder. You'll shake off any excess powder back into the tube. Take your heat gun, holding it about 2-3 inches away from the paper, and heat the embossing powder. You will see it start to "melt" and then rise up off the paper. This should only take about a minute or so.

4. Once you've heated your embossing powder, you can then fill in your design or designs with the markers/pencils. You can also add glitter to your card, if you wish.

5. You can leave the inside of the card blank or you can fill it out however you wish. Sometimes, I will write in a greeting using Calligraphy. Sometimes, I'll type up a greeting on my computer using a fancy font, color, background and then print it out. If you choose to do your inside greeting this way, you can use regular scissors or the craft scissors (they come in many different shapes) to cut the paper down to size. You'll then glue your paper onto the inside of the card.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember to shake all excess embossing powder off your card BEFORE using the heat gun!
• You don't want to hold the heat gun over your paper for too long (or too closely) because it will burn the paper.
• This is a project that anyone can do, however, if you are going to be doing this with your kids, they will need supervision with the heat gun. It gets very hot and it does burn you.