Foil – How do i use it?

The past few years, metal effects has been one of the things in scrabooking. You see it in lots of patterned paper. You can also make these effects on paper yourself with foil. In this article, you will get more inspiration in using foil to get these metal effects in different media. 

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Heat foil

This is a type of foil, that reacts to heat. In the video below, it is shown how you can use a foil pen together with this kind of foil. You write on your project over the metal foil with the pen. When you remove the foil, the foil will stick to you project where you have used the pen.

Freestyle pen is a fantastic tool if you have a nice hand writing.

You can also use a stencil as a guide, to where you are going to use the pen. You can also stamp on the foil, and use the pen to go over the guideline of the stamp on the foil.

You can get pens that warm up for your digital cuttingmachine, Foil Quill from We R. The process is in fact very similar to the Freestyle pennen.  Tape some heat foil over the paper you want to add foil effect, and start your machine. In this way, you can make foil effect of almost any pattern on your paper. Remove the tape and the sheet of foil when you have finished.

Spellbinders has also got a  “Glimmer Hot Foil System”. This is a little machine with different plates that can be used with traditional die cutting machines (BigShot, Vegabond, Spellbinders) and traditional dies. The dies are being warmed up with the plates.  Then you add the sandwich of  plates and dies through the die cutting machine. The foil will stick to the paper, where the heated die has been. You can also find a similar machine to use with  Gemini die cutting machines.

 

Adhesive foil

This is a foil, you can glue directly to your project for instance with double sided tape or folie kleber, without using heat. In this project, I have used double sided tape, and cut the tape with a Silhouette machine. You can also use a die. I have also used the tape to create small stripes. Then I added the foil on top.

The text “your dreams” is cut with a Silhouette digital cutting machine.

The headings over the photos in the album, has been created with double sided tape, cut with the SIlhouette, and adding foil over the top.

In the video bellow, I used Foilkleber on wooden decoration. I used Rayher’s foilbleber. It is just like glue with a small tip. Ad the foilkleber as glue. Let it dry. It will be sticky when it has dried, so the foil will stick to it. It is important to be patient. The foil will not stick it it hasn’t “dried”.

Here are some other ideas to use foil without a Minc or laminating machine.

Reactive transfer foil

This is a foil that will react to a medium when it gets hot. This can be reacting with the black lasertoner or mediums that you can get in a pen, paste, paint or spray. You can also get sheets of products that has the same type of medium as the black lasertoner. You can die cut these sheets and use them to add foil to your project.

Minc or laminating machine

The most well known machine in this context, is Heidi Swapp’s sin Minc. This machine do function in a similar way as a laminating machine, and gives even heat throughout the paper that goes through the machine. First you need to ad the medium tho the paper or print something out with a laserprinter. Then you ad the foil on the top (with the backside to the paper with the medium), sandwiched in a plastic folder that comes with the machine. You can also sandwich it between two normal printer sheets.

A laminating machine will function in the same way as the Minc,. I use a small and cheap laminating machine.

 

Ideas to get started.

When you have the right equipment, it is just to get started.  Here are some ideas.

 

Using foil with fabric (heat press and media sheets)

You can also get media sheets that work with foil and fabric. You can cut the media sheets with an electronic cutting machine like  Silhouette, ScanNcut eller Cricut or use dies. You do need a heat press. It might be possible to use an iron, but I generally find that iron does not really do the job, and the pattern will loosen during wash. A heat press is possible to get second cheap.

Add the cut media on the fabric, ad the foil on top and ad a piece of cloth on top, and have a go with the heat press.

Good luck with your foil projects.