Heat Embossed Photo Christmas Card

I have no idea how I managed it but while I was cleaning out both of my blades for Cameron today I broke the housing. Although I have a couple of blades which will get me by they are either clogged or dull enough that I can not cut intricate shapes with them. That meant it was back to the drawing board for a card for someone special. I was still able to use the heat embossed vellum I had already made just ended up trimming it to fit the card I made.

Then I didn't like the photo collage I had originally made so it was back to the drawing board. The pictures were not as good of the dogs as I would have liked. No matter how I tried to enhance them. Getting good pictures of the dogs is as bad as trying to get good pictures of some children. Usually at least one of them is looking away from the camera or one of them moves just as I snap the shutter. Anyway I thought I had lost a lot of pictures when my laptop broke and at the same time the card in my camera became corrupted. However, for some reason when I had backed up the laptop onto my external hard drive it had put all the pictures in a folder for the date I backed it up. So of course when I transferred them to my new computer they went into that folder. Anyway while looking through the folder I found the perfect picture.

So into Photoshop Elements I went to make a new photo to use on the card and to do cropping and enhancing of the original photo. Well you know how it goes one thing leads to another. I was looking at the artwork design I planned to use for my background and was thinking I bet I could stamp a sentiment on the photo after I print it. Then I thought why not heat emboss the sentiment. Of course that meant spending some time seeing what ink might work for heat embossing.

After a few hours of playing around today this is what I finally came up with.(Click to enlarge)

For the card base I ended up using a piece of double sided card stock I bought at a dollar store.If I can find more of this card stock I will buy it as it really cuts nicely. I bought several colors and patterns.

The snowflake swirls are stamped on vellum and heat embossed. I rubbed blue metallic chalk on the back of the vellum. I don't know if that is what caused the vellum to not stick to the card stock using a glue stick because usually I can use the glue stick and the vellum will stick. I ended up lightly spraying the front of the  card  with spray adhesive and after carefully rubbing the vellum down placing it under some books.

In Photoshop I did not like the color that the snowflake artwork was so changed the color of blue. Then added my cropped, enhanced image.  After saving my image I printed it on glossy photo paper. Then I trimmed the photo and edged it with sky blue metallic ink. Then I heat embossed the sentiment. Letting my breath out when I was done as I had been afraid I was going to mess up the photo.

I buy my photo paper at a dollar store when they have it. I usually buy several packs of it. So I don't mind using some of it to play to see what works. I'm glad I did play before trying to heat emboss the sentiment on the printed image. My embossing ink did not work, nor did many of my pigment inks. However, I had found while looking for a certain ink for my sister Brilliance gold and silver ink which I had to buy. They both worked great.  Maybe because they were really moist. Now that I know that heat embossing can be done on photos a whole new world has opened up for me. As well as I may just find myself printing and using more of my photos on cards.

Thank you for stopping by and thank you if you have read this far. Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again and a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it.