What an excellent discovery!!!

Did you know that you can emboss with your cricut simply by turning the blade round the other way? No, nor did I till earlier this evening when I came across Joy's blog with her video tutorial - you can read about it and see the video here.

So I used the lion on the animal kingdom cart to try this out. I used metal sheet at first (silver) and coloured it with alcohol ink - was pleased with the outcome (very difficult to get a photo with flash) - on here it looks as if the lines have been cut, but irl it is genuinely an embossed look.

I thought I would use the lion on a child's card and then thought it wouldn't be wise to use this metal one, so I then cut another using gold mirror card. The papers are BG max & whiskers and I stamped the lettering (PM stamps) and coloured with ordinary colouring pencils, which seemed appropriate for a child's card - not a copic in sight!

The first picture is a scan, so the gold of the lion doesn't show up at all.

This is a photo taken at an angle to try and avoid flash reflection - still doesn't do it justice, but does show the gold a bit better.

I'm linking this for these challenges:

Paper cutz 40: 'child's birthday, using digi, stamped or cricut image of a zoo animal'
Sunday stamper 102: 'we are golden'
Critter 13: 'critter birthday project'
Double Dutch 43: 'easy as 1, 2, 3 - card with a number on it'
Lexi's creations 13: 'animals'
Squigglefly 48: 'embossing'
Crazy amigo: 'numbers'
Scrap-creations Going grey 10: 'animal theme' (I used BG max & whiskers papers)
Tuesday taggers: 'step out of your comfort zone' - have never used the cricut for embossing before
Fab n funky 23: 'metal mania' - the first lion I cut (and the gold mirror one looks like metal)
Gingersnap GC54 spicy supply: 'pencils'
Your next stamp 16: 'cut it out and pop it up!'
Pixie dust studio 22: 'cut it out'
Treehouse 49: 'masculine theme'
Stamp something: 'birthday somethings'
Crazy 4 challenges 36: 'what are little boys made of?'
Stampin' for the weekend: 'a card for a male'
Hand full of stamps 28: 'get your shine on'

If you've got a cricut, I would recommend you have a go at turning the blade and embossing - could open up all sorts of avenues - especially with the Make the cut as well as cartridges. I think it's something I'll be doing more of.