Foiled for Christmas

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all had a magical Christmas. Our Christmas was awesome! My vacation started on the 17th with a 10:30 pm movie premiere of Star Wars The Force Awakens with my husband and best friend. Then I had an entire week off to prepare for Christmas and spend some quality time with my hubby and our fur kids. We spend Christmas eve  with my mom and dad and then on Christmas Day, we uphold the family tradition with my husband’s family of going to see a movie so we went with my father and sister-in-law to see Sisters. Christmas day was extra special this year because it was a beautiful snowy day here in Colorado. There’s nothing quite like a white Christmas!!

I didn’t have as much time to craft and play while I was on vacation as I would have liked to, sigh! I did eek out this beautiful card on the day before Christmas eve. I’d planned on getting it up here on my blog on Christmas eve, but I didn’t have time so I’m sharing it now.

A few months ago I got a Minc foiling machine and I hadn’t had time to really play with it.  Initially I was disappointed when I received my Minc to learn that in order to create with it, you needed to print images to be foiled on a laser printer or a copier. Ink jet printers don’t work with the foiling machines. Of course that was a fact that I learned after purchasing the Minc (read the fine print). One crafty thing led to another as they say and I ended up purchasing an inexpensive laser printer so I could use my foiling machine.

Of course now they also make pens that have toner ink in them that you can use for foiling. I haven’t played much with my Toner Ink pen yet, but I will say if you’re considering getting one just know that they have a pretty broad tip on them so they’re not made for doing any kind of fine detail work to foil. Hopefully someone will come up with a fine tip pen – hint, hint!

So I was able to print a picture with ornaments and foil it in silver and then color it with my Copics.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but the silver foil looks incredible in person. I’m in awe of how cool a technique this is and how well it worked with my Copics.

To start, I wasn’t sure if I should color the image with my Copics first or foil first. My initial concern with foiling first was that the foil might peel up while trying to color the image. However I was concerned that if I colored the image first that the foiling might not pick up the toner on the image if I colored over any of the lines. I opted to foil first and it worked out well.

I colored my ornaments in some non-traditional colors and colored the holly leaves with a couple shades of green and added the nice red bow for a little pop.

Once I’d finished coloring I fussy cut around my image and added some dimensional foam on the back.

I chose some fun paper for my background and a white for my foreground so that I could heat emboss my Peace on Earth sentiment onto the white cardstock. Then I popped my colored foil image on top of all my layers.

The foil is hard to get a good picture of so I took this one using a flash so you can see a bit more of the shiny foil.

I am looking forward to using foil with some other techniques to see how they pair together. It’s definitely a fun addition to your cards and crafts.

Hope you all are enjoying a little Peace on Earth and a little relaxation this week in preparation to ring in the New Year.