November Challenge by Christy

 Recently, I bought a texture boutique. I have been wanting to have the ability to emboss. I love that I can use almost any brand name embossing folder in it. One of the things I stumbled across in my quest for embossing folders was a cricut kit to make your own embossing folder. Essentially, what you do is to cut a design on the provided sheets and then adhere the design to the plastic folder. This produces a custom design of your own.


What you will need: a cricut machine, the cricut embossing kit, 1 pack of extra sheets to cut( optional, but I highly recommend it if it's your first time. I messed up a few times and ended up using 3 sheets), a design to cut.

I HIGHLY recommend thinking out the design you want to use very carefully. Choose something you just can't find in an already made folder. I bought my embossing kit at Joann's for $10 and then another $10 for the spare sheets. So this can be an expensive folder to make. The design needs to be unique for it to be worth the cost. Also, I won't lie...this was a lot of work. At least for me on my first folder. I think my mistake was in choosing such a small design. I had these chipboard people and I had decided to make an embossing plate to match them. I found a dingbat font of a man, woman and boy holding hands...which matched my chipboard people perfectly. It was a small design though! So it took me 3 hours to make the folder!( now that I know what I am doing, it will be a lot less next time- I hope!)


Step 1: choose your design and set your cricut to do a double cut. I used SCAL and a dingbat font. I do not have a deep housing blade. One is not necessary if you use the double cut. I didn't use the double cut the first time...so I had to use another sheet. thank goodness I had some!

Step 2: carefully remove the design from the cutting mat. the negative space will be on one side, so you will remove the backing and adhere, then run it through your embossing machine to make sure it sticks.

Step 3: take the parts that were cut out, remove the backing and stick them to the opposite side of the folder. this is where I had some trouble. Take the image that was cut out and put it back inside the negative space, then remove the backing on the image. Run it through the embossing machine and it will stick...in the right place to the opposite side of the folder.

As you can imagine...with such small images, this took me quite some time. It was especially hard to get all the little heads poked out and then adhered to the folder. I do think it was worth my efforts though! I used one of the November sketches to make a title page for an album.

I embossed 3 sheets of carstock and inked the edges on colorbox black ink. I used naked chipboard from K and company and Maya Road. Basic Grey June bug embellishments were added for a hint of color. Hand stitching softened the hard colors of the red cardstock and making memories 5th avenue ribbons.In place of the photo, I used a sheet of vellum with the title for the album. The word family was a die cut given to me by a friend. To create a visual triangle, I used a silver hat pin slipped inside the stitching. It helped balance the silver on the chipboard people and the silver S( for our last name) on the tag. The silver S was a find at a thrift store. It was inside a tin marked We R memory keepers for $1. A great find as I have a lot of metal letters now. You can see that I shifted some of the sketch elements around to make it work for my page.

As far as the cricut embossing folder kit...I do plan to try it again. Now that I know what I am doing, I think it will take me less time and effort. I am very happy with the results of the folder I made. It's unique to me and to my page. That's what made it all worth it!