Hot & Tasty - Embossing

One thing that came up in my meeting with the cafe owner about the take away cups was how to do these, and she mentioned about how it could look quite nice to 'have bits raised up', so I explained how this would be embossing and she was keen on the idea. Seen as I am just proposing everything then getting things properly embossed would cost me a fortune, so I have been thinking about it quite a bit on how I could do a DIY version. As I'm typing this now I realise I could have just typed it into google, which I may do anyway, but for now I tried this out.

I want to try and get the cups embossed to show an example of how they could be. I have been thinking about it and thought if I could get something with a decent thickness cut out using the & (and what ever else I decide to have embossed on the cup) then maybe laying wet paper over it and sticking it down tight over it may work. I printed out and stuck together some sheets of card (after doing my business card and got the idea to get the thickness), and decided to give it a go.

Before I tried out the wet paper though, I tried it dry. I put 2 sheets of paper over the top of the cut out &, and basically just pressed down hard around the edges for quite a white. My finger prints were left on the top sheet, but the one underneath was clean (something to remember). This turned out quite nice actually. I took some pics of how this turned out.

It's not perfect, obviously, but it's turned out pretty well for a DIY job. I took photos at different angles to try and capture that it is actually embossed. I think that this may certainly be a method to do it to produce mock ups at least.

I then tried it with the wet stock and stuck down. I used 2 sheets of paper again after learning from the last one, which I am glad for because my fingerprints show up a lot more on the wet stock.

It was a lot easier and quicker to get the shape of the & raised up with the wet stock, but obviously would take longer in the long run with having to wait for it to dry.

*the next day*

Here's how the wet version looked once it dried properly.

I think the dry version I did first worked the best. Although I think if I bought some tape that is strong enough to hold it like you do when you're stretching paper then it may turn out better. I compared the two though, and definitely prefer the dry way of doing it.