Oops! Did I Do That?!?!?

Sorry, ladies, but I couldn’t resist that title when I thought about writing this post…images of Steve Erkel just came running to the forefront of my mind…

You see, I ALMOST made a mistake with my STD envelopes. Well, in actuality, I DID make a mistake, but since it’s correctable, it turns into an almost mistake…you like the way that my mind works? I thought it worked out nicely for me! Anyway, back to what I did. Or didn’t do.

When I first started thinking about what I wanted for our Save the Dates, I fell in LOVE with embossing. Being a scrapper (like I’ve mentioned previously) you would think that this is something that I would be familiar with. Turns out, I’ve never even thought about it before. But I love the finish that it can give to your paper goods. Love…love…love the wedding invitations and STD stationary that I’ve seen where brides have added a touch of embossing to their project and saw what a change that little step can make. I knew immediately that our wedding stationary would be embossed in some way.

I’ve also been very good at reading what they did right and wrong and trying to learn from their mistakes. So in that frame of mind, let me share with you what I think that I did WRONG…and how I found that I could correct it!

I wanted something embossed on my STD, but with the postcard ordered and the magnet small enough that my stamp of choice for our stationary set was too large to use, I was bummed thinking that I would not be embossing anything on our STDs. Then I came up with the idea to emboss the envelopes with the scroll that I wanted to use. Cool! Back in business.

I read all that I could, and bought my supplies. I already had some stamping stuff, for my scrapbooking, but not an embossing gun or any powders. I followed the advice of other bloggers and went with colored ink and clear embossing powder, and picked up the gun at Hobby Lobby for a cool $20.

I thought that a “test drive” was in order for my new toy, and proceeded to stamp some scrolls and stuff on some test paper…dumped the powder on…shook off the excess…turned on the gun. Low and behold, that stuff works! And it’s easy! Cool. Miss CC is ready to do some embossing.

But I also noticed that my stamp was bigger than my ink pad. Hmmm…when I bought the embossing tools, I seem to remember a large black ink pad…maybe I could get a new one of those…since my black ink pad is old…kind of drying out…yeah, I can talk myself into anything! Off to Hobby Lobby for the BIG ink pad and back home again.

I worry about running the envelopes through my printer after the embossing process, so I proceed to print out the return address and all mailing addresses onto the envelopes first. The envelopes were just cheap cream envelopes that I picked up at Office Depot for about $8, so they ran through my printer like a charm, and I loved the font that I chose to do all of the addresses in.

I take out my new toys again and get to stamping and layering on that embossing powder. But to my surprise when I shake off the excess, almost no powder stays on the envelope…hmmm…scratch my head. Chalk it up to me not being fast enough. Try another two or three envelopes…same result.

The first thing that I decide was that the envelopes were such a cheap quality that the ink was just drying too fast. They were thin, after all. And they weren’t specifically an invitation weight paper or anything. Could be….but since it worked on regular computer paper, I think not.

I decided to live with it. The envelopes looked fine as they were.

But then, the other day while “killing time” at Hobby Lobby, I notice my big mistake. Embossing apparently requires embossing ink. Guess what I bought? Archiving ink. Yep, that’s right. My big black SUPER stamp pad was the wrong. kind. of. ink.

Boy do I feel dumb…

Luckily for me, I remember from my previous research that another way to do embossing is to use clear embossing ink and colored powder. Hmmm…since I’ve already stamped the scrolls in black, I wonder if I can stamp over it in clear embossing ink and cover with clear powder and get close enough that you won’t be able to tell the difference. Since all embossing supplies were on sale this week for 50% off at Hobby Lobby, I gave it a whirl.

Did another “test drive” last night with the already stamped envelopes and clear ink and powder…works like a charm. So now I know what I’ll be doing this weekend…fixing the other 70 envelopes…oh well. Live and learn, right? At least it’s fixable.

See? You can't even tell that I did this in two steps...

And don’t get me wrong. There’s not a thing wrong with leaving my envelopes just stamped. They look great. But I think that they look BETTER with the stamp being embossed! Yeah, Type A personality…bridezilla…whatever you want to call it…it’s peeking its head out right about now!

Did anyone else run into a little snag during a DIY project that you were also able to fix? Better yet, did anyone else realize that there were like 5 types of ink on the stamping aisle at your local craft store? And that it mattered which one you used? I didn’t!