DT Special Assignment Day!

Thursday is here and that means another fabulous tutorial.  We have Michele again offering us some tips & tricks.

Versamarker Technique

By Michele (Mimita) Harris

Versamark comes in the form of a stamp pad and it also comes in the form of a pen: the Versamarker. And today I will show you a very simple technique using the pen... because it’s so nifty.

First, what is Versamark? Versamark is a watermark ink. Watermark inks are a specially formulated clear ink composition which leaves a subtle tone on tone effect on the surface you apply it to. Versamark is versatile because it’s a slow-drying ink and you can therefore also emboss with it. But it is primarily designed to leave that "watermark" effect on your projects. There are other techniques with Versamark inks combining chalk inks but we will focus mainly on the embossing part with this tutorial.

You will need:

A heat gun

A Versamarker watermark pen

Embossing powder

A stencil

The paper you plan on working on

LEAVING A WATERMARK

Step 1 (Well.... there is only one step to this...) - Just trace a line with your pen in the area where you want to create depth, it’s that easy! 

The effect is more or less subtle, depending on the colour of paper you choose. If your paper is white, you will hardly see it but it leaves a nice effect on pretty much every other colours.

EMBOSSING WITH A WATERMARKER

Step 1 - Again, this is very easy; it’s the same as embossing with pigment ink except that you have full control on where you are applying your medium. The Bo Bunny Timepiece paper collection is fantastic for this technique because it has swirls in the print. Simply trace the swirls lines with the Versamarker.

Step 2 - Cover with embossing powder.

Step 3 - Remove the excess powder and put it back in the jar. 

Step 4 - Heat to melt the embossing powder with the heat gun. 

You get the idea? It’s that simple!! You can repeat these steps with different colours of embossing powders to suit your project. Although be careful to not touch your colours (or don’t overheat in these areas) because your colours may otherwise mix together.

Now, let’s apply this technique to a larger project: a 12x12 paper. Keep in mind that the paper absorbs the Versamark ink and it will dry if you cover the entire project in one application... It’s best that you work on a small portion at a time or the powder will not stick everywhere. Therefore, in the case below, I started applying the same technique shown above on the corners one by one and then I went on to adding butterflies:

Step 5 - You can also use a stencil with both the Versamark pad or the Versamarker.

 

And here is the final product:

I apologize, the embossing is impossible to show on a straight-on photo, nevertheless; here is the finished layout:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that it inspires you to try this technique.