CraftShare: Embossing Decor Tutorial

Yesterday we took a look at how embossing works in Cricut, Silhouette or other personal cutting machines.  Today I'm going to share some ways to use it to make some great decorative accents that are perfect for wall decor, scrapbook pages or cards.

For this little garden themed project I used the CRI-Kits Embosser kit, my Sure Cuts A Lot software, and a Cricut machine.

I used a 12 x 12 sheet of scrapbook paper for my main background and cut a large scrolled rectangle shape from some complimentary colored green paper:

For the vellum center I used my SCAL software to make a rounded rectangle that was 3 inches smaller in height and 2 inches smaller in width than the green background shape.  Then I inserted my text, one word at a time, in various fonts.  I dragged the words around until I liked the placement.

I loaded my embossing stylus & holder into my machine and put a sheet of vellum on my embossing mat.  Then here's the easy trick - I deleted the rectangle so I'd just emboss the words.

After the embossing was done I hit the "reload" button on my machine so the mat would realign in the right spot to cut the shape out (this is critical so everything lines up perfectly every time - DO NOT unload the mat).  Then I hit "undo" to to bring back the rectangle, deleted out the words.

I swapped in my cutting blade and clicked "cut".  When it was done I peeled the excess vellum away first and then peeled off my center piece.

I used the cartridge method for the flowers & leaves, by embossing the detailed version of shapes first, then hitting reload and swapping in a cutting blade to cut the outline version of the shapes around the embossing details.

I also cut the shapes from card stock to layer under the vellum cutouts,

And used small bits of double stick tape to adhere the vellum to the card stock:

Then I attached the accent shapes to the background paper

and the artwork was complete!  

The embossing adds that delicate detail that layered cuts of paper just don't quite have.  

I also like the softness it gives on colors that would normally be a bit louder than I'd usually like.

Got any ideas on uses for embossing?  I'd love to hear them:)  Head on back tomorrow for more die-cutting projects!

Sharing this creation with my FAVE LINK PARTIES too so click HERE to check them out!