Triple Embossed Fake Glass Hearts

The triple embossed hearts I have used lately have been very popular, so I thought I would show you how I made them. By the way, I called this post FAKE glass hearts deliberately- I really hate the word 'faux'! I'm a 'call a spade a spade' type of person!
You will need:

 Heat Gun

UTEE, or clear embossing powder

A coloured Embossing powder

Your choice of inkpad

An embossing pad, or Versamark pad

Texture stamp

Pigment ink, or Staz-on

 Card, or chipboard

Firstly, I cut a number of heart shapes. I still have my old Red Sizzix, and a Hearts die, which has 4 different sized hearts on it.They are cut from any reasonably thick card- the back of notepads is perfect, as is mountboard. I got hold of some old 'sale' cards from a store near me- the sort of thing they stand by sale items. The back of them is white, as you can see. The thicker the card the better, as there is a tendency for thinner card to warp, but you could stick two or three pieces of thinner card together, or have something handy to help flatten them when you have finished. Equally, you could get some interesting dimensional effects from not flattening. I am thinking this could produce some great flowers & leaves.

Next choose your inkpads. You want a base colour, in this case I am using Distress Chipped Sapphire. The black Adirondack will be for another set I want for a mans card. If you are going to stamp into your Triple Embossing, you also want either a Staz-on ink, or a Pigment ink. I have Encore Silver here. I also have a clear embossing pad (you can also use Versamark). This is useful if your embossing goes too hard for each layer to stick to- just pat over with the Embossing ink, and carry on.

 

 Next find a stamp to stamp into the top layer with. Any swirl/flourish/text stamp is perfect.



Finally, you need your embossing powders. UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) is the ideal choice, however you can still do this using ordinary embossing powder, you will just need more layers, and to be careful with the heating process as the finer grained powder will have a tendency to blow away. To avoid this, start heating from further away and bring your heat gun closer as you see the powder begin to melt.I first started off using ordinary powder, but loved what you could create with this technique, so I bought UTEE, and I got mine from ebay, which came in a plastic bag, and was MUCH cheaper than buying a branded name.Then you need a colour, and on this I have used Heat It Up's 'Blue Glass'.

First off, colour your heart with your chosen inkpad. You don't have to be too fussy getting a  smooth coat- you can see on mine the lines where I swiped the pad over the heart- it won't show later. I've coloured two hearts here, but only try to emboss one at a time, you can start the other one after by dabbing it with the clear pad.If you are going to use a pigment ink to stamp your texture with, ink up your stamp now- the pigment ink will stay wet for a very long time, more than long enough to complete this. If you are using Staz-on, you will have to wait until you are ready to sprinkle the last layer on. In that case, sprinkle on your last layer of EP or UTEE whilst the heart is still wet, tip off the excess, then ink up your stamp before you begin heating.
If your heart cools too much for the EP or UTEE to stick to it  for any reason, you have a couple of ways to put things right. Either re-heat the heart until the layers soften, or dab over it with the embossing pad and then continue.

 WORDS OF WARNING:  Embossing powder, especially UTEE, gets EXTREMELY HOT- don't get it on your fingers (Yes, I learnt the hard way, lol). Now I have two pieces of paper, one I tip the powder onto the piece on, then lift the piece with my scalpel and slip it onto the other piece to heat. Tip your excess powder back into its tub,then you have two empty sheets again to continue the process.

Now sprinkle on your first layer of UTEE, the ink should be plenty wet enough to hold the powder.

Tip on plenty of powder to make sure its all coated, then tip off the excess.




Now heat the powder/UTEE until it melts- it will look a bit uneven on this first coat, as you can see here.

    Repeat this process three of four times if you are using UTEE. If you are using normal fine embossing powder, you may need 8 or 10 layers- just stop when it looks thick enough.






When you have completed your clear layers, you are ready to add the last, coloured layer.Sprinkle your coloured powder into the still melted UTEE, and carefully tip away the excess powder.  Heat with your heat gun.



Your heart should look like this. If you are going to stamp a texture into it, you need to do this whilst the UTEE is still molten. Just press your stamp into the UTEE, don't worry, it does not harm your stamp!, as long as you have either Pigment ink, Staz-on or Versamark ink on your stamp.The ink coats the rubber, and helps to release it from the UTEE. Use Versamark/clear embossing ink if you just want texture, or want to rub some colour into it after, Staz-on if you want a dark imprint against a pale embossing, or a Pigment ink if you want a metallic finish, such as gold or silver.

Your textured Heart.

At this point, I remembered a technique I had seen in Julia Andrus' book, Paper Transformed, where she added Perfect Pearls before reheating to get 'trails' of mica seeming to fall down into the UTEE.The link takes you to the post. So I repeated the above process, until I reached the stage where you add the coloured powder.
What I did now was to sprinkle on my Blue embossing powder & tip off the excess, then I sprinkled a very small amount of Cosmic Shimmer Mica powder on the top, using the little brush that came with it.

           This is how it looked as the powder started to melt, and the heat gun blew the mica across the surface slightly.

It looks a little heavy here,to be honest, and I thought I had overdone it.

You can see the heating has left the surface a little bubbled.



    So, I let it cool a while, then patted it over with the clear embossing pad and sprinkled on another layer of UTEE.
                                       
                                          This is what appeared from beneath the melting powder:
  

 I was really stunned & surprised by how well this little technique worked, to be honest. It really does look like blue glass, with trails of shimmery colour through it.

This is now waiting for the perfect project- that's if I can bear to use it!
  Well I hope this little how to has been of help-if anyone has a question, feel free to e-mail me from the link in my sidebar, and I'll try to help.By the way, I found the Blue Glass Embossing powder available Here,Here,Here and Here. I shall definitely be getting myself another couple of tubs of this :)