Stampin’ Fancy Friday — Emboss It! Challenge with Fern & Flora Bundle

Hello Friends and welcome to a new Stampin’ Fancy Friday. Our July theme is “Emboss It!” We’re creating fancy projects using ANY embossing technique including heat embossing with powders, dry embossing with embossing folders or even specialty dies that add detailed embossing lines.

To see all the designers’ projects using this month’s theme, keep an eye on the Stampin’ Fancy Friday Facebook and Instagram pages. We’d also love to see any of your projects using our theme! Be sure to tag them with @stampinfancyfriday so we can find and admire them!

For my card, I decided to play with the Fern & Flora 3D Embossing Folder. I absolutely LOVE embossing folders and pretty much buy every one that Stampin’ Up! releases. Why do I love them so much? There are many reasons; they don’t cost very much, they add texture (which I love), and they’re great for techniques!

I’ve had an idea in my head for a while and decided to give it a shot. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this, but I thought it would be fun to try combining ink blending with ink swiping to reveal a multi-colored debossed design.

To start, I used Blending Brushes to randomly add three colors of ink (Lemon Lime Twist, Granny Apple Green, and Coastal Cabana) to a layer of Basic White Cardstock. My goal was to have a big variety of colors with soft transitions.

Next, I dry embossed the blended paper with the Fern & Flora 3D Embossing Folder BUT and here’s the important part, I placed the paper upside down in the folder so the blended colors were debossed (sunk), not embossed (raised.) That way, I could proceed to the next step, which is ink swiping to the raised background.

Finally, I held an ink pad in my hand at a 45 degree angle and carefully swiped it across the raised background portion of the dry embossed layer. I used Garden Green, Shaded Spruce, and Night of Navy ink pads to do the swiping over different areas of the card for a multi-color look. Obviously these three colors are much darker, so the ink swiping covered the blended areas in the background. I LOVE how this turned out! It looks similar to the Joshep’s Coat Technique used with heat embossing.

To finish my card, I emphasized all those beautiful greens by using a card base of Granny Apple Green with a layer of Lemon Lime Twist roughed up on the edges. Then, I added some ink blended die-cuts from Shaded Spruce and Lemon Lime Twist Cardstock. I also stamped the butterflies and month with Basic Black Hybrid ink and colored them with Stampin’ Blends Markers (Basic Black, Strawberry Slush, Barely Blush, and Pool Party.)

Here’s the inside – simple for now.

I hope this card has inspired you to try both ink blending and ink swiping with 3D embossing folders. The results are endless!

Have a wonderful and creative day!

Purchase products from my online store to qualify to receive free exclusive project tutorials. This month’s PDF includes 12 creative tutorials designed by my demonstrator friends and I to inspire your paper crafting! The projects feature products from the May-August 2026 Catalog and current Online Exclusives. Enjoy!