Steep, Stir & Enjoy

I started scrap booking about 6 years ago, but I was more like arranging things neatly on a page with a template, instead of creating something nice on my own. Lately I was so impressed by the work of all those genius stampers and I started collecting stamps last month. But sadly I found myself almost only use the sentiments of a stamp set.

It was raining this morning and was very cold even the heater was running. So I served myself some tea and felt so much better. After I got comfortable, I read some talented crafter's blogs and then decided to try my brand new embossing heat gun.

This should be a good starting point since I bought the heating gun last month, and it was still in it's original package. And I also have one jar of clearing embossing powder which was in the same brand new status. I played with the tea cup image from Papertrey Ink's Tea For Two additions set.

I was totally Amazed when I saw the embossing powder started melting. Oh, so much fun!

Anyway I thought I could stamp the image repeatedly as the background. But I had no idea how to arrange that nicely on a piece of paper. But I went ahead anyway, got to have a starting point, right?

But the result was not so perfect. I couldn't tap off the powder completely and apparently it couldn't be put on the card by itself alone as I planed.

However I already cut the paper according to my plan and I surely wouldn't waste them. So I stamped the tea pot, heat emboss it and then die cut it out. It's just so hard for me to tap all the excess powder off, so the tea pot wasn't perfect either. Sign....

But I just ignored that and pop it up to hide the imperfect tea cup in the middle.

The I glued on a ribbon knot, which covered the imperfection of the bottom tea cup.

NOW, it's presentable.

And I'm really happy that I was able to make something beyond the cricut cuts. What was that they were always saying? "Clean and Simple", right? ^^