TUTORIAL | DRY EMBOSSING PAPERS

Hi Everyone! Hope you are all doing great today! This is Jenn, aka jk703, here to bring you a super fun and pretty easy tutorial to give your pages a bit of a "pop." Literally! Here is the page I made: 

For my page, I'm using Mirjam's Lovebug collection of Elements, Papers and Alpha's that was released for the BYOC in February! If you haven't seen the elements, they are the cutest! Apart from that I used a template from Hearts To Love by Scrapping With Liz.

My layout was focusing on the teal, red and crafty colors. I wanted to make a pop with my background paper, but was also looking for a bit muted so the photos could shine. I decided to dry emboss my paper! Here is how I did this!

First, pick out two papers. One will have the pattern that you want, and the other will have the color that you want. I wanted a neutral color, kraft, and a fun background, large circle/polka! You will then open up your patterned paper in Photothop, and save it as a .psd file. Save it where you can locate it in a minute.

Here is what my layout looks with the kraft paper as the BG.

With that kraft paper selected in the Layers Palette, choose Filter > Texture > Texturizer. 

A BIG menu will appear, and you will look to the top right of the screen. Specifically, where the its bitsy lines and triangle are on the side. Click that, and load the texture. You will load the file you just saved above.

Once you load the texture, you will see it on the left side of the screen. Like this:

While it does have some embossed look to it, it seems too drastic of a change to look real to me. I am basing my opinion on my old stamping days, and dry embossing days. It was much softer, and less defined when I embossed with the light table and a metal stencil.

There are settings on the right side, under where you load the texture. Play with those. Enlarge the pattern, make it smaller, change the lighting, and try inversing it!

This looks a little better to me. I've enlarged the pattern, and set the relief to 8. I've also changed the light to come from the top right. This is in line with how I shadow as well.

Here, I've called it down to 55%, a 6 for relief and inverted the pattern.

Using the last look, here is what my page looks like with the embossed pattern.

To go backwards, I undo, and then start again to add the texture. I enlarge it again, and like the look better for this particular layout. Just like this....

There you have it! A quick and easy way to use the patterns you love on a neutral background.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like this tutorial! I would love to see the pages in the gallery using this technique!
Jenn | jk703