NSD 2015

Cards for NSD Scrap N Yap Celebration!

What I made later in May.

Adventures in Foiling on Paper and Fabric - Update: June 7

This is going to be an ever changing post for quite a while as I lean more and more about foiling and think of more things I can foil! I like shiny and foil is prettier and less messy than glitter and will go on almost anything! 

Later, I hope to do an outline for each technique to make it easier to follow. For now, I have to give a lot of information because you need it for trouble shooting AND to hopefully not make my mistakes!

This all started in March when Renee from my scrapbooking message board posted a link to a video about several different ways to attach foil. I suddenly realized that the foil shown looked like the very thin silver backed foil that I'd bought at a thrift shop about 4 months earlier. I did the test below with the heart stamp to see if it was the correct kind of foil. It was and I was SO happy that I'd bought all the red and green they had. 

I started Googling to find out all I could. I learned a little bit here, a little bit there, experimented and Renee, Dani and I on my scrapbooking message board shared what we learned.

So far, I've done foiling with WHITE GLUE, EMBOSSING POWDER, LASER PRINTING and WonderUnder or Therm O Web Heat n Bond UltraHold. The laser printer at the local print shop didn't seem to work as well as the laser printer at Jeff's work. I've now decided that for now, I like clear embossing powder (melted with heat gun or iron first) better than laser printing something first. And for ME, I like kind of messy artistic better than print-shop perfect.

At the bottom, I have a NEW technique, foiling on vellum printed on your INK JET printer and immediately heat embossed.





ORDERING FOIL ONLINE

I know that Hobby Lobby, Michaels and Joanns has foil but a 160 mile round trip to get foil was out of the question! I spent less at Laura Murray Designs than I would have on gas to Roswell (NM).

Laura Murray Designs had the best selection of colors and decent prices and more of the multicolor foils that most other places didn't have. I don't need 15 or 55 feet of one color, so Laura Murray Designs was the way to go for me. I got 8 rolls and the shipping was less than $5. I ordered on a Friday and received 3 days later on Monday.
Foil is 12 inches x 36 inches (1 foot by 3 feet). She has about 16 colors of metallic solid color, multi-color and hologram foils and also sells sampler packs.
She also has fabric glue to foil on fabric and leather.

Click for foil at Laura Murray Designs

I have the Scotch 902 Laminator that is less than $20 at Walmart. I've tried different carrier sheets and the parchment paper works best, thank you Dani. I was wondering about vellum when Dani from my scrapbooking message board suggested parchment. I do NOT like the results WITHOUT a carrier sheet as someone in the scrapbooking industry suggested, sample is below. 

Dani and I both bake a lot so we had parchment paper on hand, the funny thing is, she suggested it weeks BEFORE someone in the scrapbooking industry did a video telling people to use parchment paper as a carrier or to use no carrier at all. The same thing happened when I decided that I needed to let the laminator keep heating for a while even after the ready light went on.

Did a couple of tests without ANY carrier sheet more than once with the embossing powder tests and it flattened the words out too much. If you use embossing powder with the negative, there WILL be stray embossing powder and you HAVE to use parchment paper to keep it from sticking to what it should NOT stick too! 

You should always use a carrier sheet when using laser printed items because if some of the laser printing is NOT covered with foil, it gets on the laminator rollers and can come off the next time you run something through. Ask me how I know! :)

I'm letting my laminator preheat on the 5 mil setting which Scotch did confirm is higher heat than the 3 mil setting. Scotch said that 5 mil was 275 degrees, minus or plus 15 degrees and the 3 mil was 250, plus or minus 15 degrees. The sources I've found on the internet say you need at least 250 to 300 degrees for the foiling to be done right.

After my laminator preheats, I let it keep heating at least for another 10 to 20 minutes. This gets it to the higher heat and you have much better results.

I'm using Reynolds Parchment paper for baking as the carrier sheet, have it folded with the fold being the first thing to go in. I've made myself several sizes to fit whatever project is going through the laminator. As SOON as it comes out, I USUALLY run it back through to make sure it is getting hot enough. I've started turning it 90 degrees and running back through since sometimes there is a wrinkle in the foil and this takes care of most of that problem. 

Turning it and running it back through is especially important when doing a bigger solid sheet of foil, as in the negatives. Sometimes you get a slight crease and that DOES help flattening it down so everything is foiled.  Be sure and let it cool before peeling off the foil.

FOILING WITH GLUE
This was my very first foiling attempt when I realized I "accidentally" HAD the foil needed (over 20 year old foil bought at thrift shop, date stocked was on package). I've learned more since, like to let it nearly dry first. I'll do more experimentation and add that picture here. Didn't turn out with great detail BUT I DO like the effect. I'm sure it will be nicer when I get the technique down better. I put the stamp used to the left so you know what it was supposed to look like! 

This was just plain old Aleenes Acid Free Tacky Glue. I WILL be doing more with the thicker glues for paper and fabric glue for foiling on fabric and leather. I will be ordering the Foiling Transfer Adhesive that Laura carries sometime in the future.

I will be doing more experiments with glue, especially with fabric and leather so keep watching for more!

FOILING WITH EMBOSSING POWDER
ALWAYS, ALWAYS use parchment paper for the embossing powder technique! Otherwise, any extra embossing powder NOT covered by foil will STICK to the carrier paper OR the laminator rollers if you don't use a carrier sheet. ALWAYS let it cool first BEFORE you take it from the parchment paper so that ANY stray embossing powder will turn loose of the parchment paper.  

IF YOU GET STRAY FOIL, REMOVE IT BY SCRATCHING IT OFF WITH AN XACTO or similar KNIFE!

Just stamp with pigment, embossing ink or Versamark as usual and heat with a heat gun or hold it over an iron if you don't have a heat gun. You can use with any regular embossing powder (not glitter or extra thick) but SUPERFINE or DETAIL works best. The first samples did NOT use superfine/detail, didn't have any at the time.

I'll list what I used with each sample. I ordered Wow! Clear Gloss Super Fine Embossing Powder and then found out that is what other people in the scrapbooking industry suggest using. Super Fine looks nicer but the regular did ok.

This card was hard to photograph so I've got two pictures, one that shows the shiny and the other to show the colors. Happy Birthday is Jellybean from Laura Murray and just silver and gold for the candle and flame.  

NOTE: Laura's last shipment of Jelly Bean has much much larger "splotches" of color than the one shown below. Also the newer version has dark blue, red and yellow in addition to the mainly turquoise, fuchsia and purple the older one shown below has.

Used regular white embossing, NOT super fine.    

On the picture below, the one on the left was with the parchment paper carrier sheet, the one on the right was without, you can see that the embossing powder "ran" without the carrier sheet. It did so on the other test too. I did a test because it was suggested by someone in the scrapbooking industry that did a video that you should use it without a carrier sheet.

Also, without a carrier sheet, it would be almost impossible to keep the foil over the melted embossing powder when I wanted to do TWO colors. The carrier sheet keeps any mess caused by the foil slipping inside the carrier sheet, NOT on my laminator rolls. I used regular clear embossing (not the super fine) because my superfine had not come in.

This is purple foil from Laura Murray, it IS a dark purple, not pinkish. 

 

 

Here is what I did with the new Wow! Clear Gloss Super Fine Embossing Powder. These are the NEGATIVES from the ones above. I'm going for pretty and artistic, not perfect! Honestly, I like what I did with the negative scraps better than the original! SO hard to photograph, the background of this purple is SO pretty in person. I just used an Xacto Knife to scratch around the "perfect" straight line edges so that they would look better with the edges that were "messy".

Used Wow! Clear Gloss Super Fine Embossing Powder (melted with heat gun first)

 

This is on MULBERRY paper that SHELPIE (from my scrapbooking message board) sent me, thanks Shelpie! I thought lime green would be pretty with the purple and it was! The extra embossing powder gave another color to this. Yes, it is "messy", but I think it is a PRETTY messy. I thought it looked great for "trash"!

Used Wow! Clear Gloss Super Fine Embossing Powder

 

 

Experiment with laser "negative" and two colors of "trash" foil
The Happy Birthday was printed on a laser printer, this is the negative left from the first foiling. AFTER I peeled off the clear coating, I decided I needed to use another color of "trash" foil to make it "fit" the shape better since the letters weren't very tall.

OOPS! I didn't remember that I'd peeled the clear coating off until AFTER I tried to pull the parchment paper back... the red started coming off onto the parchment paper. I had tried to pull it off TOO soon, didn't let it cool down enough and it was peeling off onto the parchment.

I IMMEDIATELY lay the parchment back down and ran the whole thing BACK through the laminator TWICE and hoped for the best. This time, I let it cool down completely before pulling back the parchment paper. I then peeled the clear off the silver. The funny thing is, the silver was now SHINY but the red, that went back through WITHOUT the clear covering it was now MATTE finish. Pretty!

Can you imagine the mess if I hadn't had the parchment paper covering this?
Moral of the story: Always use parchment paper!

Guess what! My mistake showed me a new technique, matte finish foil! The first picture shows the matte finish at the best I can, the second shows that the silver is shiny. 

FOILING with Wonder Under and Therm O Web Heat n Bond UltraHold
This is WonderUnder, just cut out with a die, sometimes I ironed on the paper first, then ran through the laminator with the foil.  Wow! Clear Gloss Super Fine Embossing Powder on the LEFT one. Here is an example of the laser printed on the right and the negative left behind and attached using embossing powder on the left. This is aqua foil from Laura Murray Designs.  

FOILING with LASER PRINTED TEXT OR SHAPES
I had better luck with Jeff's work laser than I had with the local print shop laser. Make sure you print it in BLACK only, no colors, change your printer to black text. Red is what I got from the thrift shop but the Laura Murray Designs foils did the same thing, just a little black flakes left behind. As I heated the laminator for an extra 10 to 20 minutes AFTER the "ready" light came on, it worked better.      
This one was better but the thin parts of the font are too thin but it DOES look good because of the multi colors. Older version of Jelly Bean from Laura Murray. 

 

The candy cane was done with a thicker iron-on web similar to Therm O Web so it came out smoother. The Wonder Under has "holes" in it, therefore, the design does too. I did it on the dark paper so you could see the details better,  used red because I had a lot of that at the time and not much green!

 
As you can see below, more smooth coverage since this iron-on was thicker. The iron-on was BLACK, so you can tell that it covered very well!

 

I hope these help you to get started. I'll add more tips and info as I learn them and as all of you post them here.

Update: June 7

It suddenly occurred to  me to try foiling on heat embossed vellum. I've been printing on vellum and heat embossing for a long time. My Canon printers always worked better than HP printers. Especially, the printers that feed from the top and go straight down and come out at the bottom. As in, no turning a corner like most HP.

Do NOT use "printable" vellum, would most likely dry WAY too quick. I just use regular scrapbooking vellum. PRINT on the SLICKEST side! I've tried many brands and most have a side that is slicker than the other. You do NOT want the ink to dry too soon. I have a piece of paper laying at the bottom so that I can immediately start pouring the embossing powder over the printed vellum and it helps to have a large piece of paper or cardstock underneath the vellum that just came out of the printer. Melt with the heat gun as usual.

I've only done the THREE examples below so far. It works better with a thinner font, the one on the bottom was my first and it was TOO wide because it spread too much. I used the same font on the top, the thinner version that was NOT bolded and went into the word processing program and had the letters print a little further apart. Turned out much better. 

Oh and do NOT run through the laminator more than once. Multiple times that usually works better on the laser, just makes the embossed (powder) letters just spread more.

This first example is teal like the one below, foil is HARD to photograph! The script font worked fairly well. With more practice, I think I can get them to look good. Especially since a laser printer is NOT in my future and I do have a couple of packages of vellum.

 

 

I have only foiled TWO things on fabric so far but plan to do more and will add what I've learned here at a later date.