I worked for hours on the embossing videos and finally realized that I was making it much too complicated.  I was trying to show six different inks but clearly, from the beginning, two of those inks were not effective, at all.  I had bought a really inexpensive brand called “Ink It Up” because I’d seen Lindsay use it on her videos.  The difference, though, was that Lindsay had been re-inking hers with glycerin and water, so if hers didn’t work well from the beginning, she knew what to do to fix it.  That’s not an option for everyone, so I should have explained the situation and eliminated it from the mix.  I also bought a colored ink from Hampton Arts, that in theory, is really great.  It’s a light green color whose color is supposed to disappear once you add the embossing powder and heat it.  Unfortunately, the embossing powder didn’t want to stick to it and it still maintained the greenish shade.  Again, I should have explained it and gotten rid of it.

I really wanted to show the problems you can have with black embossing powder…it’s so hard to get every single small spot of it from the areas around the embossed area.  It was a virtual nightmare, when trying to also decide if the inks and the anti-static pouches work.

I need to rethink the entire video and start from scratch.  I think the video was overly thought-out and way too much information, most of it not really necessary and over the top.  A new crafter would never want the information I was providing, so I’m going to re-make it.   Getting rid of hours of work is frustrating, but I’d rather have a video that actually helps people than make a video that’s so confusing that no one would enjoy it.

I do think that some of the paper I was using was much better for removing any powder that wasn’t where it should have been.  But it also could have been the powder I chose for that paper too.  I was trying to show white on black paper, black on white paper, etc., but that doesn’t really tell us if one paper is better than another, if it’s that particular powder used with that paper.  I need to be consistent, so all inks are the same, when used with the same powder, when used on different papers, thereby allowing the viewer to really know if the paper brand does make a difference.   This should be a stand-alone video, because a beginning crafter would have one brand, maybe two, of paper, so by showing a bunch of brands of paper will only confuse them.

I’ve got a general idea of how I’m going to make the first video, and the videos to follow will be for the more advanced embosser.  I really hope today goes a lot better than yesterday.  I have several two sided pieces of card stock with embossing covering everything.  And in the end, what did they tell the viewer?  I have too much time on my hands, clearly.

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