Watching people here use the adhesive films inspired an incremental improvement in making the plates for embossing velvet. It’s exactly what you would expect: I put the 3M 468MP Transfer Tape on one side of my MDF before cutting the design to avoid the wood glue glue-up. It was a lot easier. The rest is pretty much the same as the previous project.
Well, it is also a different design with Celtic spirals.
And I made another dice bag [previously] for my niece as a present. I used glow floss in the kumihimo drawstring braid for this one and, 3D printed some skull beads in glow-in-the-dark resin for the bead set.
I don’t really have a good answer. I have done about three dozen impressions on the first plate I made (the key pattern) and, about a dozen on this new one. Neither one is really showing any signs of wear yet.
The 3M adhesive is supposed to be weaker at higher temperatures. If I am remembering correctly, it’s at about half strength around 350ºF. While I am embossing around 400ºF, I’m sure the MDF is buffering some of that and, half strength is still pretty strong. I tried to pull off one of the pieces with my fingers while it was hot and, couldn’t get it to budge.
The plates are also only under heat (from the top only) and pressure for about 15-20 seconds per impression.
With moisture, heat and pressure all involved, there might eventually be a catastrophic failure of some sort. So far, so good, though.
Thanks for the reminder about this technique, I’ve been thinking about lining some boxes with velvet and this kind of thing would really lift the result. Also, your spiral pattern is absolutely gorgeous!
Wowza. I love everything about this… from the cool techniques to the combo of maker gadgets to the gorgeous results. Thank you so much for sharing with us!
