Foiling and Leafing and writing too much.

Here's another card with foiling...a cuttlebug folder embossed on Kraft card and then the raised detail 'coloured' with hologrpahic foil.

I promised to talk a bit about the foiling/leafing that I've used on cards recently posted.  Try not to yawn - click away if it's all old hat to you!

The autumnal ferns at left are gilded with Leaf. It also comes described as Gilding Flakes.  It comes in boxes or packets of sheets in gold, silver or copper, for example.  Once burnished, all the biddy bits and crumbs it creates can be saved for extensive re-use.  It has a soft glow to it and is probably the messiest medium I use in terms of static and cling.  I always decant the leaf into a large zip lock bag and try to work inside the bag when the glue is dry.  If you try it, you'll see why. Don't be put off by this...the tidy up effort is teeny compared to the reward!
So sorry about the naff photos of the foil...the light in this hemisphere is pants this morning.  

The foil that I use is on rolls (but you can get it in sheet form).  Here (as in, in England) it's described as 'Hot Foil' and you can use it with one of those heated wands to do freehand application to all sorts of surfaces. Comes in any number of colours and choices - holographic or plain, etc. It's basically a sheet of plastic that has a removable metallic coating on the underside.  When your glue is ready, place the foil, face up over the glue and burnish.  Lift away. Any colour left on the carrier sheet is good for re-use.  The carrier sheet, when fully used, will be transparent.  Quite a cost effective medium I tell ya.  

You can use most any wet glue...indeed the small kit that I first bought contained 6 1" wide reels of foil and a tube of glue that Mr Dunnit reliably informs me is  good strong PVA. Either spread it thin or be patient.  The key with all the gluing is patience...it really needs to be dry but sticky.  Which is why I use the Zig pen...it's obvious when dry enough and fast-drying enough to keep my attention!  If it isnt dry, the foil will actually just lift the glue off the card. Remember, if you use a heat gun to dry the glue, you might end up wrecking any lovely heat embossing that you've previously done on the card. Usually, the foiling/leafing, is like the glitter glue..pretty much the last thing I do to a card.  In the case below, the moon is foiled,  the glue was drying while I stamped and cut out the tree trunks to overlay the original image.  

Coincidentally this was the card that caused agonies in a workshop between the 'eyeballers' (me) and those who prefer precision (most everyone else).  Normally, I would pre-cut card stock and mounts to size to save the workshopeers the trouble and boredom.  But imagine if I'd pre-cut the gloss card upon which the image is stamped.  How many of the precision lovers do you think would have been un-shakey enough to fit the image on as precisely as necessary?  Far easier, I thought, to give out bigger pieces of stock and have the workshoppers cut to size.  See, you make one thing easier and it makes another thing harder.  But that's possibly a statement that should apply elsewhere.  
Here endeth the foiling lecture.  Go get coffee, the rest of your day depends on you being awake.