Hi friends! It's Angela here today with a card that's going to help you get even more out of your hot foil plates.

The most recent Pinkfresh Studio release was all about the holidays, and it certainly been getting me into a festive mood! Some of my favorites are the new Chevron, Diagonal Stripes, and Diamond hot foil plates because they create beautiful backgrounds with the most gorgeous shine. They're perfect for pairing with the other holiday items in this release - or any Pinkfresh products, for that matter!

While your first instinct might be to use a hot foil plate for foiling, today I'm going to show you how I used one for dry embossing as well. This is something you can do even if you don't have a hot foiling machine (or if you're on the fence about buying one!) I began with two A2-sized white card panels, with the intention of foiling on one, and dry embossing on the other. I switched on my hot foiling machine, and in the meantime, worked on the dry embossed part of the background.

Using the Diamond hot foil plate, I stacked up a sandwich for my die cutting machine. I have a Sizzix Big Shot, and played around with the number of shims, plates and settings until I found one that worked best. The sandwich that worked with the clearest, most crisp impression (working from the bottom up) was:

1. Big Shot set up on tab 1 (there are 2 tabs, and normally when doing regular die cutting you'd have it set up on tab
2. Embossing pad
3. Plain white 110lb A2 card panel
4. Hot foil plate
5. Embossing pad
6. 4 x 110lb cardstock shims
7. Cutting plate

Once stacked up, I ran this through the machine just once to create the impression you see on the top right and bottom left corners of the card. Note that the best combination of shims, embossing pads and cutting plates will vary depending on your die cutting machine, but the right one won't require a ton of force to crank through. The result is a gorgeous white panel with a lot of visual interest. (Hot tip: I recommend writing down your "perfect sandwich" once you find it so that you don't have to test next time!)

By this point my hot foiling machine was ready to go, so I used the second white A2 panel to create the gold foiled impression of the Diamond plate. I took both panels to my paper trimmer, cutting them down to the exact same size of 3.5" wide x 4.75" tall, then cut the white dry embossed panel into quarters. I adhered these to the top right and bottom left corners of the foiled panel, matching up the lines as precisely as I could.

With the background complete, it was time to create the focal point. For this, I used the new Pointsettia stamp and layering stencil, along with Pinkfresh inks in Evergreen, Emerald City and Berrylicious. Once all my pointsettia clusters were colored in, I used the coordinating Pointsettia die to cut them all out in a single pass (1-piece dies are truly a dream!) and arranged a few on my card. To match the matte gold in the background, I layered on a sentiment created with the Holiday Perfect Sentiments set, and adhered it all to the center of my card. After mounting the assembled panel to my A2 card base, I finished it off with a few gold metallic pearls.

I hope this card has inspired you to put these new hot foil plates to use - both for their intended purpose, and for dry embossing too! I'll see you back here soon, and in the meantime, happy crafting! - Angela