Embossed Cityscape Tutorial

Hi crafters! We have had a beautiful autumn weekend here, with perfect photo weather. I like to observe how my favorite trees change colors from week to week. Many of the Birch trees seem to be a little less spectacular this year, probably because they suffered the most during the warm and very dry summer.

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Cityscape theme. Don't miss the project by our wonderful October guest designer Tenia Nelson, aka Jazzy Paper Designs.

My tag started out as a Christmas tag, but wanted to become something else. I both like and dislike big cities at the same time. They are vibrant, energetic, busy and fun to visit, with an emphasis on visit, because living in the city center is not for me. I value having nature around me too much. Cityscapes at night are a pretty cool sight though, and that's the theme of my tag. 

I had fun heat embossing the Tim Holtz Metropolis buildings.

Die cut Metropolis buildings from Heavystock paper. I didn't die cut any of the small details that you can use to dress up the buildings, since I was planning to heat emboss the entire buildings.

Paint the buildings black and brown, to give them a darker base.

I used three embossing powders by Ranger: Gunmetal, Aqua Tinsel and Mixed Media Sea. All three are awesome and give a different effect. Gunmetal gives a cool metallic shine. Aqua Tinsel is a distressed glittery powder. And the new Mixed Media powers are so cool, with larger pieces mixed in with the powder. I used the Emboss-It Dabber to apply embossing ink to the houses and left a few small areas without ink. Heat emboss with a heat tool, being careful not to burn yourself.

 

For the background, I applied embossing paste through the Speckles stencil. When dry, I covered it with gesso.

I forgot to take a photo of the painting step - the tag was painted with Black Soot, Blueprint Sketch, and Hickory Smoke. When the paint was dry, I dry-brushed white and silver paint on the tag, to increase the texture and make the sky look like a snowy/starry sky.

The tag was tied with a piece of travel-themed Chatter Design Tape folded up on itself.

The textured background is pretty cool and I like the effect of the speckles. I also added some Brutus Monroe Acrylic Bubbles.

I used Quotations Metallic Stickers as my sentiments and glued the buildings down to create a cityscape. The combinations of different embossing powders makes for a cool effect. It is a little hard to see the difference between the tinsel and the mixed media powder here. In real life, the difference is much more visible.

As a border, I used a piece of vellum which was embossed in the Dot Matrix folder (which is my all time favourite embossing folder), a Mini Provincial Impresslits die cut, and a piece of Industrious border sticker. I also used Industrious Deco Type Stickers for the title.

I hope you will join us this week in our Cityscape challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

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