Sorry to have been such a stranger! I've been busy helping my mom, keeping our kids' busy fall schedules from driving us batty -- and of course designing stamping projects.
Years ago I took a very fun class with the wonderful Mary O'Neil, who started her own stamp company out of Nashville that focused on bold stamps suitable for fabric stamping. She also loves to emboss the stamps on to velvet -- like the design on the velvet heart seen on this card.
This was a project at my fall Big Shot die cutting class. The velvet was cut out with the Hearts & Brackets Orginals die and then here's how to emboss it. I used the floral image from the stamp set Gifts of Christmas. It's a wood-mounted set and for now I'm sticking with wood mounted stamps for this velvet embossing technique.
You need to start with synthetic velvet -- polyester acetate, nylon, etc. Mary says it can have some rayon in it as well (which is not synthetic) -- but natural cotton velvets won't work. Raid the thrift shops for some old velvet clothes you can re-purpose. I die cut the velvet heart shape first -- and then place your wood stamp on an ironing surface, rubber side up. Lay the heart with the right side of the velvet against the rubber. Spritz the back lightly with plain water. I like to cover it with a pressing cloth for protection -- then press with an iron on a wool setting, holding it in place for about 10 seconds. Don't move it around or the velvet will shift. make sure it's dry and then voila -- you'll have an image impressed into your velvet. (This will wash out but can be dry cleaned if you try this on things like a scarf or clothes.) This won't hurt the stamp as rubber is vulcanized at very high temps (but again, I'm not sure that the cling vinyl on the back of our red rubber clear mount images would like this heat, so wood mounted stamps are what I'm recommending.)
The scallop trim on the card is the Stampin' Up Deck the Halls fabric, backed with the Multi-Purpose Adhesive Sheets from the Holiday Mini catalog. Then it was die cut with the Tasteful Trim BIGZ XL die (love it!) -- and then it's just peel and stick for more texture on this simple card.
