Letterpressing Hotfoils

I really love the new fancy hotfoil plate from The Greetery - the spring frame is really pretty and fine detailed so will be lovely to frame lots of designs. I wanted to foil it today but I ran out of time to get the foiler out as we've family for Easter lunch. So instead I thought I'd show how it can be used to create a letterpress frame too (foiling to follow soon with a video as I have tips to share for foil frustrations!)

You can do letterpress techniques with press plates and hotfoil plates with either an embossing mat or crease plate in your die cut machine. The new and improved foil plates from The Greetery are thicker than some other brands so whereas I've shown over on our YouTube channel how to use a crease plate to letterpress, with this plate I found it was a bit too much and the plate pierced the paper. So for this version I used my embossing mat with an extra cardboard shim and found that to have just enough pressure that way to get a detailed impression. I used versafine clair ink in green to cover the whole plate, then used a cue-tip to remove the ink from the tulips so I could colour them in after. I then ran it through my big shot and trimmed the panel to fit my card after.

You get nice debossed designs this way. You could go back in with a second ink colour if preferred before making the pass but I found it quicker to colour with a copic on this version. I over coloured the dots in the same pink too.

I thought, it being Easter, I'd add the bunny from Bunny Kisses die in the middle - and one of the things he can hold is a very similar tulip. I left it blank as even though he's easter-ish, I think a bunny holding a flower could work for get well or sending love too.

The frame is really detailed so you don't need much, here's the same frame turned on its side with a simple die cut sentiment in the middle.