Cereal box embossing

Supplies:

– empty cardboard cereal boxes
– scissors or cutting blade
– hot glue or white glue
– letters/shapes
– bone folder or the smooth end of a plastic butter knife
– spray bottle
– colored paper
– folders, notebooks, date books, etc.

Instructions:

• Cut the letter or shape you want out of the cereal box cardboard. Cut the shape 3 or 4 times and stick them together to make one form.
• Once the letter and shape stack is thick, attach it to a larger piece of cardboard and prepare to emboss.
• Lightly mist a piece of paper and lay over the embossing plate. Damp paper has more give and stretch.
• Top the misted paper with a white piece of paper to protect it from the bone folder. The white paper shields the paper below from getting shiny during embossing.
• Rub steadily around the embossing plate, making sure to hold the paper in place. Work slowly and take extra time to gently work into corners, around text serifs and on the edges.
• When you feel like the paper is shaped well, remove the white paper and check.

You can simply emboss the outer cover of paper folders in this manner. If you’d like to emboss notebooks, you can stick the embossed paper on the notebook.

Source: Designmom.com