Hi Everyone! I am interrupting my leather series to do something more appropriate to the Holiday season. Before I finished the leather series, I had started a different series which included some Halloween designs, but didn’t finish the videos in time for that season, haha. So I’ll insert these in now while it’s the season for sparkly things 🙂 .
Today I am experimenting with foil. I do not have a product, like the Glimmer from SpellBinders, where you can use die cuts with the machine. Normally in order to foil a design, I print with a laser printer in black and then foil that using heat activated foil and a laminator. I have a couple of posts on that foil process including this one about foiling on top of an inkjet print. However, there are times where I want to use a die cut, so in this session I’m trying some different ideas. I did not show how I use the lamination machine to foil, because there are lots of other videos on that I’m sure.
I will mention that I use paper as a carrier sheet, both top and bottom with the foil covered projects in between. I don’t ever run anything through the laminator that is not between carrier sheets 😉 .
The first thing that I did was I used a piece of cardstock with spatters and water droplets, scanned it in to my computer and changed it to black and white in Photoshop. Then I made several copies of that with different opacities to see if I could use a lower opacity and save some toner 😉 . I die cut some shapes out of the paper and used those to run that through the foil machine. There was a 50% opacity example, a 75% opacity and full strength 100% opacity of the same background. In the lightest version (50%) the foil did adhere in some places that were the darkest, but the foil did not stick to the shade of the lightest gray to white. I tried to run the piece through the laminator a couple of times, but there was still a lot of places where it didn’t adhere. Not that I was really expecting it to. I’m sure I can doctor that up- I can probably spray it with some different inks, etc. (Note: I did play around with Distress paint and that did work). So if you want full coverage 50% opacity doesn’t work all that well. The second piece was 76% opacity and that worked better. There’s still a spots of missing foil, and again, this was spattered design with lights and darks. I could have just printed the whole thing in plain black. But I wanted to see what it did with a little bit of dimension. I thought the 75% opacity was still usable. The darkest (100%) came out great. It really didn’t miss anything there. Maybe a a few tiny spots. I had this on a lighter temperature too. and I probably could have done it a second time and it would have been fine. But I thought it turned out great. So anyway, so that’s a really cool way to use your die cuts if you have a laser printer and a laminator and you normally foil on laser prints. Just print some black backgrounds, die cut and then foil those.
The other thing I tried was DecoFoil transfer gel over a die cut and also Sizzix 3D adhesive. As I usually do any time that I’m using a paste/gel on top of a cutout, I’ll usually do the pasting on another piece of cardstock. This way I usually end up with a twofer because I can use the paste covered cut out, and the cardstock with paste not covered by the cutout.
In the first paste example, I cut an intricate shape out of a Sizzix die by Lisa Jones. There also was a matching base layer, which I cut out of a piece of watercolor cardstock that was an A2 greeting card mat size. I layered the mat with the hole from the base layer on top of an matching size piece of cardstock and then laid the intricate shape in the middle of the base layer hole. I used the DecoFoil transfer paste over the top of all the layers. So in one spread I will cover the intricate shape, the reverse of that shape on the bottom piece of cardstock and the cardstock with the base layer hole, all with the same foil transfer paste. So actually it’ll be a three-fer!
The paste must be left to dry and when that is done, you can cover it with foil and run it through the laminator.
I created a similar sandwich using a Sizzix die that was more of a stencil only it was 2 pieces not 3 in this case. I laid the stencil cut piece on top of a plain piece of cardstock. For this second experiment I used Sizzix 3D adhesive. I really like thes Sizzix pastes, but be forewarned- this one is sticky! It was a bit tricky removing the top piece! I set these aside to cure as well, my thought being the paste would dry sticky. I did not find that to be so. In the future I might try to just lay the foil on top while it is still wet. While I was letting those cure, I decided to try one more thing. I used one of my Yupo stencils and applied crackle paste through it onto cardstock and then I put a piece of the heat transfer foil on top while it was wet just to test if it would adhere. I wasn’t sure it would stick, but I figured I would give it a shot.
The DecoFoil transfer gel experiment worked great! I placed foil on all three pieces and ran them through the laminator. There were a couple of places where I missed with the paste in all three of the die cuts, but I can go back in and I can either put more paste on and do it again or you’ll see later I came up with something else where I could tweak that. Another alternative would be to color with inks or paints. Note that I I should have done all of the pieces in different colors, which would then be pretty layered. But I definitely loved the way the DecoFoil transfer gel experiment turned out!
The next set was the stencil that I used with Sizzix 3D adhesive. I thought this would dry sticky, but it did not. I’m not actually sure what it’s supposed to do then- and I probably should watch a youTube video or something 🙂 – but I ended up running it through the laminator. I covered the leaves in green foil and then put the red over the whole top so that I could get a two tone effect. And that one came out great. You’ll see some of the paste stuck to my carrier sheet, so I have to work with that a little bit. But I loved the way that came out! The second piece, the one that was the actual stencil (top piece while pasting) I did a patchwork of different color foils. Green and teal over the leaves, gold over the berries, red over the flower petals, and then the whole thing covered on top with green to get everything else. If you have little leftover pieces, you can go in and do different colors like I did here. A little tedious/tricky with foil, but a fun look! Again I missed some spots, but again I’m not too concerned. I can color the missed spots or tweak them with more foil.
The crackle paste example actually worked! The foil stuck to the paste even though I didn’t run it through the laminator. It wasn’t completely dry (after 3 hours, but it was cold!) so I’d leave it overnight the next time. I was kind of hoping maybe I would get a little bit of crackle texture, but I wasn’t even expecting this to work at all. So I am going to take my win here. I save all my pieces of leftover foil. You can see an idea of what to do with them in this post, but even little bits I save for filling in missing spots. Which brings me to my final test…
As a last experiment I used Zig markers on die cuts and then put the foil right on top. I have a small and large chisel which I used here, although I think there is a pen version which would be great for adding smaller details and words, etc. I used the big chisel, and colored over a die cut that didn’t work, put the foil on top, and let it sit to dry. I peeled it off and it looks like that worked! For the second example, I just added dots of glue using the smaller chisel, added foil on top and dried and that worked too. So I thought, okay, that’s kind of cool.
I wondered, could I? Would this fix the pieces where I didn’t get the full coverage and there were missed spots? This would avoid having to re-paste and re-laminate. I could just go in and fill in, put the foil back on to let it dry and voila! And yes that indeed did work! Yay! And then I thought, well, what happens if I have something that is embossed? Haha that did not go as well as the other trials. As far as I can tell from this experiment, if the embossing powder was thick and completely covered the die cut, the glue did not dry well with the foil, even if left overnight. If the embossed coating was lighter because I wiped or flicked some of it off, then that worked much better.
I was intrigued with the Zig marker idea so I also used it on a stamped image and that worked fine also!
I’m also wondering if you could use the heat and stick embossing powder. I have not tried that yet, and quite frankly I don’t love that stuff- it’s so finicky and never seems to be as sticky as I’d like it. So if I do end up trying it I will update this post. Hope you enjoyed all these experiments!! Foil away!! Enjoy the sparkle of the season!
