Homemade gifts are always a nice touch - they're personal, customization is a large portion, and often times, quite affordable. Since I'm old-fashioned and still love to send out handwritten notes, I go through an absurd amount of stationery. I decided to make a few notecard sets as holiday gifts for girlfriends who feel similarly about sending/receiving mail. Here are the steps I took as well as a simple embossing 101 tutorial {a little trick to make them look more professional}.
What you need: Clear ink pad, twine, embossing powder, stamps, plain note sets and envelopes, stickers, embossing heat tool.
Embossing is really simple and makes everything look a bit more polished {though, of course, there's nothing wrong with just using stamps}. Here are the basic steps:
1. Apply clear ink onto stamp.
2. Place stamp in desired location and press down.
3. Sprinkle embossing powder on the stamped area.
4. Dust the extra embossing powder back into the container {make sure the only remaining embossing powder is in the desired stamp area}.
5. Keep your heating tool about 3 inches away and heat the stamped area until the powder melts into a solid form.
I made two different sets. The first is more traditional {and can be used year-round} in a simple black and white color scheme with my friend's initial at the top. The sweet scalloped detail on the cards, as well as the shiny embossing, keep them from feeling too plain.
The second set embraces a more festive, winter theme. I used grey cards with pinecone gold embossing, which I matched along the edges of the cards by using a gold Sharpie.
I finished both sets off with candy cane envelope sealing stickers and held everything together with sparkly twine.
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