Embossing Fail

This weekend I finally got around to making a mock up of our invitations.  I ordered supplies ages ago from the absolutely amazing Paper Circle.  Paper Circle is based in Canada, has fantastic prices and some of the most amazing customer service I’ve experienced.  Plus their products are top notch!

I wanted to make a mock up so I could know if:

• The design in my head would translate into the real thing like I hoped.
• I could print on beautiful shimmery paper with our laser printer.
• My ideas would work without having to sacrifice oodles of supplies.

All in all I was really happy with how my mock up turned out.  The laser printer did a great job on the shimmery paper.

There was however one thing that didn’t work out.Embossing was a bit of a fail.I love the idea of a white embossed graphic on black, but check out how messy it looks.  The edges are not crisp and there is white embossing powder flecked around the image.  After using the embossing heat tool to set the powder the cardstock warped.  I was not pleased with the result.

I’m worried about wasting a lot of cardstock to make the embossing work.  I’m also a bit of a perfectionist and I’m not so keen on sending the invite out if the embossing is going to look like this.  I’ve tried this stamp on different surfaces before (envelopes, magazines) and it turned out really well so maybe the powder is sticking to the cardstock?

I’m leaning towards ditching my plan to emboss something on our invitations.  Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to make this work?