Emerging Color Resist Technique Tutorial

Ok, I'll admit it...I really love stamping and the more I stamp the more I want to stamp. It's a wonderfully vicious circle.  Emerging Color is one of those techniques that have some very basic and constant elements to it, but the creative license is all yours in how you present it. I'm sure if you Google or YouTube you will find a ton of tutorials and a lot of them will be very similar.  Emerging Color boils down to this one word: resist. This is at its very core a resist technique. The whole trick to doing this is to remember that you will work in layers. You all have seen the page I did for this month's kit. The border across the top uses my version of Emerging Color.

These are the samples I did for this tutorial.

 They look a little grungy, but I did them for the purpose of illustrating how the resist works.

Supplies:
*Heat Gun
*Clear Embossing Powder
*Stamps
*Ink
*Versamark or other embossing ink
*Ink Blending Tool

Step One:

The only thing you really need to remember is this; anything that you clear emboss ON will stay just as you originally placed it on your page. With that in mind I begin to create my first layer knowing that the majority of these colors will stay in tact.

I took the butterflies stamp and added 2 colors of distress ink and then stamped it on my page. I then added some Broken China Distress Ink to a few places around my butterflies. I want sections of the blue to show through when I'm done.

Step Two:

This is the stamp that I want to emboss. This will be the image that will resist all ink going forward. Depending on the image you already created, your final embossed image could show up as being colored or white, or a combination. A big tip: In order for the resist to have an impact your stamp should lay down a fair amount of ink. If your design is anything other than a simple one, a fine or dainty stamp may not work really well.

I used Versamark Ink on my stamp and then stamped my project. Make sure to get your clear embossing powder onto all areas of your stamped image. Now use your heat gun to emboss it. Check your image by looking at an angle to make sure that all of the embossing powder has melted.


Here is what my project looks like with my image embossed. Hopefully you can see it.

Step Three:

I begin adding ink to my project using the lightest color ink first. You can see that my embossed image is beginning to pop.

If you have Googled this technique you will note that it is at this point most people take a brayer and ink over their entire project in really dark ink so that only those images or colors under the embossing show and nothing else. I've taken mine one step further.
 

Step Four:

I begin by adding black ink in different areas. The darker you make your ink, the more your embossing shows up.

For this project I decided to spray it with just a light misting of water. This reacts with the distress ink and some of the lines between the colors being to blend on their own. I lightly wipe the water off; concentrating on removing the ink from the embossed image.

As you can see in the picture above, the blue and some of the purple and marigold of my butterflies still shows through as if it hasn't been touched. Yet, those colors are either gone or greatly reduced where the embossing was more "distressed" or not there at all.

This is one of many really cool resist techniques that you can do with embossing. I hope you give it a try! If you have any questions please let me know!!!


XO,
Lisa