...on foil. A review, a tutorial and a freebie

The foil in the photo was applied with the iron.

Recently I've been so obsessed with shiny things, that I’m starting to think I was a magpie during my previous life.

And in planning, when you think of shiny, you do think about foil.

There are two problem though: I don't own the Minc Foil Applicator nor Heidy Swapp foil.

I own a laminator (an Olympia A330) so I can skip buying the Minc, as plenty of videos and tutorials taught me. Regarding the second problem, I looked up but I found the foil just a little too pricey. Therefore, I looked upon Aliexpress and I bought this one, in gold.

Yesterday, less than three weeks from the order, they delivered it to me.

Now I had plenty of foil and an urge to try it out... and so I did. You can see some results on my Instagram.

As I don't have other foil to make a comparison, I'll just share with you my thoughts about it.

The one I bought comes in packs of 50 A4 size sheets in it, and in ten different colors/effects.

The seller specifies that the foil is meant for laser printing and it can be applied with the laminator and even with a more common iron.

I've tried both methods and, while everything runs smoother with the laminator, I think it's worth it to give it a try with the iron.

As you may already know, foil is meant to bond with the black toner of the laser printer by applying a certain amount of heat on it (I've read how much somewhere, but I can't find it).

For this very reason, when you're not using specific equipment, you may have to help the whole process by avoiding using thick medium for your printing. As a fact, with this particular foil, I've found that you can get the best results using 100 gsm paper, but I've obtained pretty decent results with 160 gsm paper on the laminator (not with the iron, where 100 gsm is the maximum paper weight IMHO).

That said, let’s jump to the tutorials.

For this tutorial I'll share with you the page you see in the photo at the beginning of this post. It comes in Personal size, but if you're interested in it and you need it other sizes, just say so in the comments section and I'll adjust it for you. As I don't own a color laser printer, first I printed the color image whith the inkjet printer (here's the front, and here's the back side). Then I run the page one more time through my black and white laser printer, in order to have the part where I want to print the foil printed. This process may be a little risky in term of alignment, but could be useful if you decide, for example, that you want only certain words in a text to be covered with foil. If you own a color laser printer you can get the full front page here.

1. Applying the foil with the laminator

you'll need

• A laser printed design of your choice

• A sheet of parchment paper the size of your printed page

• A piece of toner receptive foil slightly larger of the area you want to cover

• A laminator

Turn the laminator on and wait for it to warm up.

Place the foil over the area you want to be covered.

Place a sheet of parchment paper over the top of the printed paper in order to hold the metallic foil in place and run everyting through the laminator.

Repeat at least once (with my laminator it takes 3 passages to obtain the best results).

When you notice that the foil gets a little tight around the laser printed objects (meaning that it has bonded with the toner) gently peel off the foil, starting from a corner.

Should you notice that the foil has failed to fully transfer on the paper, put it back in its place, and, with the parchment paper on it, run it another time through the laminator.

2. Applying the foil with the iron

you'll need

• A laser printed design of your choice

• A sheet of parchment paper the size of your printed page

• A piece of toner receptive foil slightly larger of the area you want to cover

• An iron

• A metallic surface (I used a stainless steel tray). This will reflect some of the iron heat and help the foil to bond

Turn the iron on at max temperature and wait for it to warm up.

Place the foil over the area you want to be covered.

Place a sheet of parchment paper over the top of the printed paper in order to hold the metallic foil in place and put everything on top of a metallic suface (as you can see in the picture, I used a tray). NOTE 1: please pay attention in order not to burn yourself!

Take the iron and keep it on the pile for about 1 minute, with gentle rotatory movements (this will keep the foil from forming creases). NOTE 2: The timing for this operation may vary from iron to iron and depends on the graphic complexity. I suggest you to run some tests before going all out with your final design.

When you see the foil getting tight around the graphic, gently peel it off and check if it bonded. If not, take it another few seconds under the iron.

Here you can see the stainless steel tray under the printed paper.

I don't know if you can notice (sorry for the photo) but the foil has bonded with the printed sentence.

As you see, It's all pretty simple: it just need a little try to get everything all right. The result sometimes is not perfect (expecially with the iron, you may have some tiny spots where the foil doesn't bond well), but I think that for the price it's totally worth it.

The only cons I've found so far, it's the limit in the paper weight choice, but I'm sure that with some creativity youl'll get past to it.

And you? What's your personal take on foil? Please share it on the comment section!

the flower design is adapted from Freepik

the font is Naira Script by ndro

#tutorial #DIY #review #freebie