Make An Embossed Fruit Birthday Card!

Get ready for any birthday coming up this season! Learn how to make this refreshing citrus card paired with adorable puns. This fruit patterned greeting card takes minimal effort and few supplies, so whether you are new to crafting or already have expereince, we'll show you the basics of creating an embossed design that looks professional and polished. Now, grab your supplies listed below, and follow along in this zesty tutorial.

• Orange You Sweet Clear Stamp Set
• Acrylic Stamp Block
• Pigment Ink Pads
• White Cardstock
• Craft Paper of Choice: Colors, Patterns and Designs
• Glue
• Scissors or Cricut
• Ruler
• Envelope

• Heat Tool
• Embossing Powder
• Glue Tape Runner
• 3-D Styrofoam Dots
• Pearl Embellishments
• Tweezers
• Address Stamp

To get started, gather all of your materials to have them accessible. Place your card stock papers onto a craft matt to protect your surface. Cut your cardstock layers to size and glue layers together.

 Using clear stamps is easy, simply peel your stamp from it's backing sheet and place onto an acrylic stamp block. The photopolymer is slightly tacky, so your stamp can easily stick and be removed from your stamp block.

Second, ink your stamp with the ink pad and color of your choice. In this project we are using green, yellow, orange and black pigment ink. Pigment inks provide rich saturated colors, but do take longer to dry. Pigment inks are perfect for heat embossing or water-based mixed media projects like watercolor.

"Stamp ink colors from light to dark for optimial color blending."

As you start stamping it's important to work from light to dark ink colors. This ensures two things: First, that your light ink pads don't absorb any left over ink residue from darker colors. Second, colors blend better by overlaying darker colors onto lighter ones, versus trying to blend a lighter color onto a darker one.

As your ink is still wet, you can try heat embossing to give your card a polished look. Heat embossing is easy, all you need is embossing powder and a heat tool. If you do not have either, you can skip this step, and your card will still look great!

If you are going to heat emboss:

1. Grab clear embossing powder.
2. Sprinkle it over the stamped images.
3. Pour excess powder back into container.
4. Quickly use a heat tool to heat-set the emossing powder. This will melt and crystalize the powder to provide a raised texture and shimmering look to your stamped images.

Once your ink is dry, glue your citrus pattern to the card.

Take a spare peice of paper and stamp your greeting. Cut paper to size and add 3D adhesive foam dots to create dimension.

If you would like to add a little extra pizzaz, add some adhesive gems or pearl embellishments. Try adding these details to the cetner of your citrus fruits as a "sweet" touch, or anywhere you would like!

You did it! In a few simple steps, you have completed your first embossed fruit birthday card. If you like to keep card-making simple, creating patterns with a few different colors or adding an embossed look quickly takes your card from basic to polished!

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