Mock Croc Technique (and tutorial!)

Hi everyone! Yesterday i went to a Stampin' Up! meeting with my team - the Blue Angels. There was 10 of us at the meeting at it was lovely to catch up with everyone and share ideas. Cate organised a couple of lovely make and take projects (which i will share with over the next week or so!) and we also did some swap projects. Basically we all made one project and produced it 10 times and swapped them with one another - which means i now have lots of lovely projects to share with all my CraftyThINKers!

Anyway i decided to do something a bit different for my swaps. I have seen the 'mock croc' technique online - it is basically a technique where you can 'alter' a simple piece of card creating it into a piece of faux leather (I'm therefore entering this into 'CupCake Craft Challenge', this weeks challenge is 'Alter It') that looks like this:

I have seen this technique used in several tutorials online and thought i'd give it a go to create some bookmarks for my swaps - the finished product looked like this:

Would you like to know how to create this effect? Well here you go - for the first time ever on my Crafty ThINKer blog i have created a step-by-step technique tutorial:

Step 1:

Start with a piece of cardstock and cut it to size - it can be any colour you like - in this tutorial i use 'Chocolate Chip'

Step 2:

Then dab your 'Versa Mark' (which can be found in the Stampin' Up catty) completely over your cardstock.

Step 3:

Next sprinkle 'Clear Embossing Powder' completely over your card!

Step 4:

Now use your 'Bone Folder' to squiggle lines through your clear embossed cardstock - don't think about it too much just do it nice and quickly!

Step 5:

Then use your 'Heat Tool', heat your 'Clear Embossing Powder' to create a shiny texture.

Final Product:

And you end up with a faux leather effect!!! Clever huh!

The bookmarks:

You can actually create 14 bookmarks from one piece of A4 card!! As i said before i used 'Chocolate Chip' cardstock. To create the toppers i stamped some tortoises from the 'Fox and Friends' stampset onto 'Very Vanilla' cardstock - using 'Soft Suede' and 'Wild Wasabi' 'Stampin' Write Markers'. I punched them out using a '1-3/8" Circle Punch' and mounted them on some 'Wild Wasabi' 'Scallop Circles'.

Here's a final close-up:

Sorry for the massively long post - hope you have found the tutorial useful - i would love to see any projects that you make using these techniques - please email me any pics of your crafty makes!!

Now... one final thing - tomorrow is the launch of the Crafty Boots Challenge Site - as you may know i'm a member of the design team! I'd love as many of you CraftyThINKers to get involved with the challenge! I'll be keeping an eye out for you all!!!