Painting and Flattening Texture Fades

Today I found out the coolest thing! OK....you know how you can paint over the texture fades (or as some know them....embossing plastic folder thingys) to create a grunge or shabby chic look? Well if you don’t know the painting trick you can go watch my you tube on it – it’s a guaranteed way to turn any crazy background you made that you don’t like, into something spectacular!
Anyway – there is a certain look you get with that technique; it doesn’t look like stamping. I bring that up because there are texture fades that are exact replicas of stamps (for example Tim Holtz – from back when he was with Stamper’s Anonymous – V4-1096 stamp otherwise known as “Carte Postale,” and the texture fade that is the same image and size from the Sizzix Alterations collection).

Since one habit is to “emboss” with the folder and then run an ink pad over the raised areas to bring out the image – one might argue – if you are going to do that why not just use the stamp of the image to begin with? Well with the paint technique it is an entirely different look – a look you can’t get with a stamp and ink. However, if you want to then use it in a collage – you kind of have to accept and enjoy the fact that it is extremely textured with bits and pieces raised up everywhere.....until now! I figured out today that you can texture fade (dry emboss) and then do whatever you want to it using the raised areas to grab paint a certain way or ink a certain way etc. Then you can run it back through the embossing machine (I have the big shot) with both plates and a paper shim and take away all the embossing – it will be flat again! This is too cool! I have so many backgrounds I have made that I could not use for certain things because they did not lie flat – now they do! The best example of why you would want it to lie flat again is in the case where you want to decoupage (collage) an image to it – you can’t do that when there are raised areas. I’m gonna have to go buy the rest of the texture fades collection – I just saw that there is a new one out by Tim Holtz....