A while back my sister showed me a technique for embossing foil by folding a piece of foil several times for thickness and placing it into an embossing folder to run through the CuddleBug machine. I then added a layer of white gesso and let it dry. Alcohol ink was dripped on top and after it dried, I lightly ran fine sandpaper across the embossed foil to bring out the foil highlights. Here are the fireworks I made.

Well, fast forward to now and I still do not own an embossing machine (though I do have access to one any time I want.) I decided to see what would happen with using alcohol ink on one layer of embossed foil. I laid a stencil on the table, placed one sheet of foil over it and rubbed the foil with my finger to emboss.

I used many stencils to randomly fill the foil with embossed designs.

To color the foil, alcohol ink was dropped on top of the embossed foil along with drops of alcohol blending solution and set aside to dry.

After the ink dried, instead of using sandpaper (since the foil was one layer and I did not use gesso) I lightly rubbed my finger across the embossed foil to bring out the foil embossed design.

To protect any more ink from being rubbed off, I sprayed the sheet of foil with Mod Podge Acrylic spray. Then when dry I brushed a couple of coats of Mod Podge on top to make the foil more sturdy.

I used a portion of the foil to cover a small notebook by cutting a piece slightly larger than the notebook. I glued the foil to the cover of the notebook with tacky glue, turning the edges to the inside and gluing them as well. I cut pieces of scrapbook paper to line the inside of the front and back cover and glued in place.

Here are some more closeups of the various embossed textures in the foil.

Now to figure out what to do with the rest of the piece of foil— maybe cut out pieces to use on a card, or to put into a mixed media collage, or use on a piece of jewelry, or cover something else…

Be creative! Take some time to play with the tools and supplies you already own to see how you can use them in different ways. Try this technique and share with us in the comments how it worked for you.