OLW157 and a word about Heat Embossing

This week's One Layer Wednesday challenge is hosted by Cheryl and the challenge is to make your sentiment take 'centre stage'.

This design is inspired by this one I found on Bev's blog the other day when I was looking through in preparation for her birthday yesterday. I used an old Hero Arts sentiment and coloured it in with copics. I adapted Bev's colourful design to be one layer, and it's easy, peasy and celebratory!

Now for a little word on heat embossing - a number of you asked me about my foil-wrapped chipboard and my silicone grabber. I start this story by saying that to my knowledge there is no science about this method, although it does seem to smack of that increasingly-rarely-found thing - common sense.

It all started in 2007 when I was making save the date cards for a couple.

 We used red cards and envelopes from Michael's and in order to tie them together, we decided to emboss the flower in clear onto the envelopes (sorry, no photo, but I know you have a good imagination!).

The envelopes were thin and burnt like CRAZY as soon as I got anywhere near them with the heat gun. So I put my thinking cap on. I took a piece of the cardboard that comes with Stampin' Up! DP and cut 2 5x7 panels and glued them together to make it thick and rigid. Then I put aluminum foil over it and taped it at the back. My theory (this is the common sense part) was that by putting this foil-covered card under the envelope, the foil would reflect some of the heat from the heat gun and the powder would melt from top and bottom. Whatever the science is, it worked. And I noticed that the happy side-effect of this method was a definite reduction in warping. It doesn't eliminate warping, but I find that quite often the paper will relax as it cools and reduce warping even further. And if that doesn't work, I put it under a dictionary! (BTW, I'm still using the same foil-wrapped card, so it was definitely a very cost-effective invention!)

Now for the silicone grabber. I usually try to emboss on a larger piece of cardstock than I need so that I don't have to get my fingers too close to the heat gun. But for those little pieces, I used to have those tweezers that came with the 'tool kit' that was popular a few years ago from Michael's. Over time, I found that I ended up with embossing powder melted right onto them and if I used them, that powder would melt again and leave marks on my new piece. I actually saw this contraption on someone else's blog (please let me know if it was you) and managed to find one (brand name Trudeau) in my local kitchen gadget shop (Home Outfitters - I don't think they exist outside of Canada  - the link above is to Amazon). I've only used it a couple of times, but one thing that I do like is that the top side of the pincher is smaller than the bottom side, so you can get a good grip on the bottom of the foil board but right at the edge of the top of your cardstock and you are not just hanging onto the edges. The other good thing is that because it's silicone, the melted EP will not stick to it. Here are a couple of pictures that are hopefully worth more than the last 1000 words!