Step One:  Select your font. I used CK "Fill In” font because it has nice straight lines on the sides of the fill boxes on each letter. Make sure the font is sized correctly for the width of your adhesive. Size 100 works with 3/8 inch wide adhesive. Check this sizing by printing out a sample page of your title on computer paper and trying the adhesive in the "fill box" on the lettering.

Step Two:  Print out the page title onto plain cardstock. You can also hand draw your lettering if you are good at that. Be sure to match the sizing on the FILL IN block of the letters to the width of the adhesive you are using. My Easy Stick adhesive strip is 3/8 inch wide so I made my title with fill boxes exactly that 3/8 inch wide too. Again, this worked out to be a font size of 100. If you have a narrower adhesive, make your fill in font smaller to compensate.

Step Three:  Carefully drag your adhesive into the fill in block of the letters. Be sure the adhesive is filling the block at top and bottom and has a fairly clean start and stop  line. If you run over a tiny bit, we can fix that in a moment. This may take a letter or two to practice but it is fairly straightforward. 

Step Four:  Decide if you want embossing powder (red in my examples) or glitter (blue in my examples). Pour the powder or glitter onto the letters. The adhesive will hold the powder down.   

 Step Five:  Pour off the excess heat embossing powder or glitter. At this point, brush off any excess (outside the lettering) with a fine paintbrush if needed.

Step Six:  Check for areas that the adhesive went to far like at the top and the bottom. To fix these, just push the powder and adhesive with your fingernail gently until it is within the fill block again. Remember that wherever the embossing powder sits before heating will be where you have color after heating. So if you want to 'fix' anything about where the excess powder is sitting, do it now.

 Another problem that may pop up is having an area at the base or the top of the letter where you stopped short and there is no adhesive. We will fix that in a moment--after heating up and setting this first layer.

Step Seven: Heat set the embossing powder with the heat gun. Be careful of course as the heat can be intense. If you chose glitter embellishing, do not heat set the glitter. It is not necessary. Once the layer of embossing powder is set and cool for about 10 seconds, take a look. 

Step Eight: Do you need to touch up any areas that are missing powder? If so, take another pass at it with the adhesive or a glue pen. Pour on another bit of embossing powder. Heat again using the heat gun. That should fix it!

Wahhlaah!   You are done with your heat-embossed fill lettering! 

 Once you master this simple adhesive and heat embossing technique, it is a great one to use for titles, accent letters, names, and even to decorate your journal boxes or photo mats. I can see this adhesive embossing as stripes on page backgrounds, a fancy border on a photo mat, or as a shimmery plaid accent block (See sample at top of page).  Have fun with it!

~~Happy Scrapping!~~
Rockester