Studies in Black and Gold

My local favourite coffee shop just got their own rubber stamp for using on bags of coffee beans they repackage and sell. Rather than just plain old black on brown paper, I thought I'd do some samples of how it could look if they did some embossing and/or distressing to make it a bit more interesting. Their theme colours are black and gold, so I ended up using a comparable stamp and doing some studies in different techniques and combinations of those.

The left is Queen's Gold embossed over black acrylic. The right is Heirloom Gold Perfect Peals over black acrylic. These ended up being a little too "clean" and literal, but I like the subleness of the Perfect Pearls.

The left is clear emboss over black acrylic, then overpainted with gold acrylic, aka Shabby Chic. I'm still getting to grips with this technique. When it works, it looks great, but sometimes it doesn't. The difficulty is getting the acrylic off of the embossed areas, while leaving enough of it on the background. I think they key is a bold stamp so you get lots of embossed area as really get that glossy enameled look like on my previous tag. The right is clear emboss over the manilla background, then black acrylic.

The right is Scattered Straw Distress Embossing powder on black acrylic. The right is regular black embossing, then coloured with Scattered Straw Distress Ink.