No Foiling Machine? No Problem!

I have been searching everywhere for different colors of gilding flakes and finally found some on Amazon! This is a great option for adding foil without a foiling machine. I decided to play with the gilding sheets utilizing the Queen & Co. Star Shaped Shaker kit. 

​

Supplies:​​

• Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper
• Tim Holtz Distress Oxide ink: Mustard Seed
• Lawn Fawn Stitched Borders
• Queen & Company Star Shaped Shaker kit
• Versafine Onyx Black Ink pad
• Silhouette Double Sided Adhesive sheets
• Gumindaris Gold Leaf sheets

Mustard Seed is my all-time favorite yellow of the Distress inks, so I was so excited when it was released as a Distress Oxide color! Using a mini ink blending tool, I inked up my Bristol smooth paper and faded out toward the edges. Next, I used the dotted border die from Lawn Fawn to create the border.

Queen & Co. offered an amazing 4th of July sale, and that's when I picked up this Star Shaped kit. It's great! I die cut a few of the stars from Silhouette's double sided adhesive sheets, and I ended up with both frames and full stars. I placed one star at a time onto my card base, removed the top adhesive sheet, then placed a sheet of gold leaf (various colors) on top of the exposed adhesive. TIP: Gold Leaf is very messy so I did this inside a small cardboard box to make sure I could contain the crumbs. 

Typically I create with Gold Leaf in "flake" form, so using sheets for this project gave me a more polished look than the flakes. Using Gold Leaf in sheet form will give you more of a foiled look...and you don't even need a foiling machine! Please note that the Gold Leaf sheets are extremely fragile. It's very easy to tear and create flakes...however, it did not give me the same outcome as other foil flakes I've used, such as Heidi Swapp or Tonic Studios. I would like to try making flakes and mixing some of the colors, such as blue and gold or pink and purple. I'll post those projects if it works!

In order to remove excess foil I used a course brush to polish my stars. Then I used a piece of a swiffer dust cloth to wipe up the crumbs. It can get pretty messy if you're not careful, but it's so much fun! To finish the card I used black ink to stamp the sentiment, which is also part of the stamp set included in the Star Shaker kit. This was a quick card and I was happy to be using that lovely Mustard Seed ink while experimenting with these new COLORED Gold Leaf foil sheets!

​Thanks for visiting!

Give foiling a try, without a foiling machine! If you don't have any dies, you could use punches to create shapes out of double sided adhesive.