Heat Emboss Resist Technique Faux Batik Backgrounds

Lately it seems that I just spend all my free time playing at making backgrounds and not actually finishing any projects lol. But it’s good to play and experiment and you never know what will come out of it!

I decided to play around with this emboss resist technique and this Hugs and Wildflower stamp set, since it is one of my newer ones and it was on the top of the pile.  You can see my last experiment with this stamp set here.  This technique reminds me of something I used to do with crayons when I was a kid.  Did anyone else remember doing this crayon technique?  You cover a sheet of paper with thick crayon stripes and then go over the whole thing with a dark colour like black, then take something sharp and scrape it off to reveal the colours underneath and make patterns etc.  This emboss resist technique reminds me of that.

So what is heat emboss or emboss technique?  It’s a similar end result to the crayon technique I mentioned above but instead of crayons, you cover the background of your card with blended ink.  I’m using Wild Dandelion and Passionate Pink inks from Gina K.  You don’t have to be very careful since it will all get covered over eventually.  I sprayed water over the ink backgrounds to distress them a little.  Then the fun begins…

Using Versamark ink, stamp your images and then cover with clear embossing powder.  This is important as clear embossing powder allows the ink colour underneath to show through so if you want to have that effect of showing the (in this case) pink and yellow inks to show through, then use clear powder.  There is another way of doing this which I will explain at the end of this post.  So once you have everything stamped, use a heat gun to melt the embossing powder.  Please note that clear embossing powder can be really hard to see, so you might want to stamp and heat your background in sections so you can see where you are stamping lol.

When all the stamping and heat embossing is done, you will end up with something that looks like this.  The next step is to cover all of it with darker inks like this Wild Lilac and Blue Raspberry inks.  You can see where they cover the yellow and pink they start to make greens and blues and purples.

Or with this one, I used Coral Reef and Red Velvet inks and I have to say this one reminds me so much of some Bali Batik fabric that I have in the stash!

So as you blend your ink over the background, the embossed parts “resist” allowing the colours underneath to show through and giving you this batik type effect.

This colour combo is not my favourite lol I used a teal ink but it made the yellow underneath turn out really green, but hey ho. As you are blending, give the embossed parts a wipe with a clean cloth to keep it clear. 

 

So I mentioned there are two ways (that I know of) to do this technique – one is with clear embossing powder which allows the colour underneath to show through the clear embossing which remains on your card.  The other way is to remove the embossing powder after you are done ink blending and the inks are dry.  With this method is doesn’t really matter what colour of embossing powder you use since it will be taken off anyway! (or it should but some residue might be left behind, so if in doubt, use clear or white)   So you can use it with an ink blended background as above and the colour under the embossing will be the ink colours, or you can apply it before ink blending and when it is removed the colour underneath will be white (or whatever colour of card you are using).  All you have to do for the second technique is to place a piece of plain copy paper on top of the background and iron it to lift off the embossing.  The heat of the iron will melt the embossing powder again and it will attach to the copy paper leaving your background free of embossing but leaving the stamped pattern!

Despite using clear embossing powder for these backgrounds, this second option is what I decided to do in the end.  I used my dinky little iron to iron them all, and removed all the embossing powder and that left my backgrounds looking even more like batik fabric pieces!  It’s a simple and fun technique to try and all you need are some inks and some embossing powder (and an iron if you want to remove it at the end)

Supplies used FYI

cardstock from stash
Gina K inks – various colours
Hugs and Wildflowers stamp set
Versamark ink
Wow Clear embossing powder
makeup brush for ink blending
Iron (optional)
scrap paper (optional)