Weddingbee Blog

Hive, I owe you big time. I was totally ready to give up after my failed embossing attempt, but thanks to all the suggestions and a little patience (and another pack of envelopes), I have some really spiffy looking invitation envelopes. Sweet!

I tried several different things between the first round of fail and this final round, but these combination of changes seemed to do the trick:

Redesigned stamp: So, if you remember my first fail, I was having all kinds of troubles getting the numbers in our return address to come out clearly. Once the embossing powder melted, the numbers in the address were filling in. So, I ordered a new stamp that was bigger so I could make the numbers larger. I also designed the stamp to use a really thin font, so that when the powder melted and expanded, it wouldn’t look terrible, and I spaced the letters and numbers out.

Embossing buddy: I had never heard of an embossing buddy, but several helpful readers commented that it would help. Thank you, thank you, thank you! So, I have no idea how it works, but you rub this little pouchy thing across your surface before you stamp, and it prevents the extra powder from sticking everywhere, which was a huge problem I had before.

My embossing buddy

Ink choice: I tried silver ink and silver powder and silver ink and clear powder, but I still wasn’t getting the results I wanted. After Miss Elephant’s post about her super cute passport-style programs, I asked her for some tips, and she mentioned that she used the Versamark watermark ink pad after a recommendation from the PaperSource folks. I think this made a HUGE difference.

Embossing powder: Instead of regular embossing powder, I switched to a fine detail embossing powder. Since my stamp has the smaller address numbers, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this in the first place.

I am so happy with this result! Granted, I went through a lot of envelopes in the process, but I think it was worth it. What DIY projects did you refuse to give up on?