Kate and Barbara were at it again today! We are stamping maniacs!
We decided to try a technique featured in "The Rubber Stamper" (April/May 2003), which involved painting an embossed image with sweetened condensed milk and using a heat gun to carmelize the milk. It gives a lovely effect, and of course no two images are exactly the same. Your colors are limited to something that goes with cream/brown/yellow/rust, though! You can see all of our experiments in a picture named "Milk_images" at:
1) Paint a thin layer. If it's too thick, it just bubbles really thick like the butterfly in the upper left corner of the picture on the above web page. The "thick" effect might be good for certain uses or backgrounds, but we didn't like it so much inside the image. All detail was lost.
2) Let the milk dry a little before applying heat.
3) Heat slowly. As soon as the milk starts to bubble up, pull away the heat and let the bubbles settle back down. Then heat again. Pull away. Repeat until you get the desired level of browning.
4) Directed heat can be used for a shading effect, such as the row of pumpkins seen on our picture, where I made the top half of the image darker than the bottom.