Todays product spotlight is on the American Crafts Embossing Powder: Zing!
Prior to the release of zing I had dabbled with embossing with mixed results. I owned a heat gun which I didn't like using because it kept cutting out, and had tried a bit of basic embossing with black and white powders. OK I thought, this is something I have tried, it is alright but nothing amazing. The heat gun went in the cupboard and then in a box when I moved (nearly two years ago) and it is still in one of the many boxes that have not yet been unpacked (we have done a lot of building \ renovating so if it wasn't urgent it was stored!)
Then, along came Zing. Jill saw it demonstrated at CHA last year and ordered quite a bit. I indulged her and thought ok, embossing powder... whatever! Anyway, straight off the plane from Anaheim before unpacking or even having a cup of tea she pulls out the example from the demo which was in her hand luggage. This was REALLY good embossing powder. It comes in opaque colours which are strong and vivid, in glitter finish which is super sparkly and metallic finish which unlike some of the metallics I have used before actually does look metallic!
So of course when the delivery arrived I actually wanted to try it... no heat gun! But that was solved with a Heat Buddy from Personal Impressions - MUCH better than my old heat gun just don't confuse it with a hair drier!
I loved the zing so much we decided to use it as a Make n Take for one of our retreats. In fact we have done Make n Takes with it at our last two retreats.
In April we used the Maya Road zoo chipboard keychains, co-ordinating stamps and some paint to create these dear little animals
and then at our November retreat we combined it with star shaped chipboard, more paint and a little Modge Podge to create these beautiful star decorations.
This really is a product that does what it says on the tin and the amount of Zing sales went way up once people had seen it in action. Not only is the finish on all types great but it is easy to use too - you can see the change as the powder heats and embosses so no guess work as to when it is done.
I added some additional sparkle to this layout of Olivia by embossing the frame around the photo with copper glitter Zing
In addition to embossing chipboard, paper and cardstock I had great fun creating the embellishments on these layouts using Zing on heat embossable acetate. I embossed the pattern on one side using black Zing and then on the reverse I embossed with either opaque, metallic or glitter Zing to give different effects.
These two layouts were examples for a class which had two colour options in the kit with different papers - however they both had the white platform thickers. To tie in the colour scheme on the Family layout I embossed the chipboard thickers with black opaque zing - so you could jazz up old chipboard letters with metallic or glitter zing powders!
For our blog readers only we have a discount code to get 10% off any Zing purchased between now and 27th February so long as your order before P&P comes to more than £5 - just type the following code into the promotional code box during checkout: BLOG270110