Embossed 12" strips tutorial...

When I was making my Peach Bellini page the other day I needed a 12" strip embossing to give some texture to the top of the page.  At the time I had thought that I wouldn't be able to hide any joins so I was a bit perplexed about how to achieve this and then I had one of those lightbulb moments that come along now and then.

I may have seen this done on someones blog or somewhere, but I really can't remember doing so.  I'm hoping that it will be new to most people, but if not ah well!  If you have done this on your blog and I'm not giving you credit then I do apologise, but it's not done intentionally and I really can not remember seeing a tutorial for this anywhere.

Here goes...

Step 1 - a torn piece of 12" long paper ready to be embossed

Step 2 - preparing the embossing folder.  

This is the scary part.  My daughter was sat scrapping at the side of me and couldn't believe what I was doing.  'Eeeeeek' she said 'You've just said you use that every day and now you're attacking it with a craft knife!'

Be brave, but be very careful too and don't blame me if it all goes pear shaped.  The thing to do is to cut a slit along the fold of the embossing folder.  I would say leave at least an inch (maybe more) at each side of the folder uncut to keep it's strength.

Step 3 - slide in the paper strip as normal and emboss the first part.

Step 4 - thread the strip through the opening in the fold of the embossing folder so that the embossed part is sticking out of the end.  To ensure that all the embossed dots line up on the finished piece it's a good idea to locate the top two rows of embossed dots done in the previous run through and emboss them again. You should be able to feel the pattern fall into place.

Again run the piece through your machine.

Step 5 - Move the piece up to emboss the last little part of your strip.  I found that because the embossed paper was being threaded through first none of the embossing became squashed, but if this does happen you can place the part over a section of dots and use an embossing tool to press them back into shape.

Here's the finished piece.

Hope this tutorial has been useful to you.  Here's the finished scrapbook page. 

As you can see in the end I could have embossed small pieces and hidden the joins under the photos, but how useful is it to be able to do the whole lot in one go?

Please be ultra careful if you do decide to cut any of your folders as I really wouldn't want anyone to ruin a cherished folder.

Big hugs

Ann xxx