More Foiling Awesomeness!

Hello my friends!  Are you a fan of foiling?  Do you love that shiny goodness?  If you do, you will be interested in this post.
I was watching videos on You Tube the other night and I ran across one that mentioned foiling.  I am always looking for new foiling techniques, so I was anxious to watch it  And I am glad that I did.  Just for the record, in case you ever visit my post and read this, Kate Palmer, it is your fault that I went to bed so late last night!  But all for a good reason!  Kate was doing some experimenting with some Heidi Swapp mediums.  I didn't realize that now there is a foil reactive paint and a reactive spray.  She was testing how these mediums worked with foiling over some sprayed backgrounds.  Here is a link to Kate's video She referred to watching some videos by Heidi Swapp and discovering that the Heidi Swapp metallic embossing paste and her metallic screen ink were also reactive with foil.  I don't know why it never occurred to me to subscribe to Heidi Swapp's channel to get info on foiling, but I have corrected that now.  You don't have to own a Minc to get some useful information, it all works with a laminator  as well, which is what I have.  I didn't have the spray or reactive paint, but I did have the embossing paste and I also had the screen ink, purely by accident.  I thought I was buying embossing paste and later realized that the great deal I had gotten was for screen ink NOT embossing paste, lol.  I had resolved to use it in a similar fashion as the paste, but this was great news if I could use it for foiling. The gold ink and paste were specified, which I didn't have, but I thought I'd give what I had, a try.. Who needs sleep anyways?  My mind got going and I thought, I wonder if any  paste would work, I do have other gold embossing pastes, so I thought I'd try those as well.  Then I thought I'd try some gloss medium, too.

I had some Gelli prints that I had cut down to try and make some ATCs, so I thought I would use them to test the various inks and pastes.  I ran the various mediums through a Tim Holtz burlap stencil

I got out my laminator and my foiling scraps once they were all absolutely dry.  I just use a folded piece of copy paper as a carrier.  I started feeding them through the laminator.

I was so thrilled to discover that everything I tested, worked!  The gel and the embossing paste seemed to work a little better than the screen ink, but I will still be using the ink for foiling, too.  This just opened a new foiling world for me! 

I used Heidi Swapp embossing paste through a stencil on my tag today, and it worked beautifully

 I have been doing some experimenting with toner to try and make something like a toner paint  and ink, with some success,  but now this may take me in a different direction.   I am wondering if I actually need toner. at all .   So I have some more ideas and experimenting to do!.  In the meantime though, I thought I would try  using some other pastes and mediums  So stay tuned, and tomorrow I will share the results of the other products I am trying to see if they are also reactive with foil. .  I am an artist that loves to paint wit a lot of texture, so I have several different pastes and mediums to try.   Hopefully, there may be something that you already have on hand that will work for you

Thanks so much for letting me share some foiling fun with you.  If you think there may be other foiling fans that will find this useful, please share! 

Thanks again and have an awesome and artful day!

If you enjoy foiling, be sure to check out some of my other foiling posts!

Part 2 of More Foiling Awesomeness!

An Awesome Foiling Technique

Crinkled Tissue Textured Foiling

Try Something New

Book Page Challenge

A white paint pen / mark making comparison

Hello my friends!
I was doing a comparison of my white paint pens and thought it may be of some interest to some of you.  So, today I am sharing my results.
I have a couple of Posca paint pens.  These are not readily available.  In fact I don't personally know of any where local where I can purchase them, so I ordered them off Amazon.ca.  They took forever to get here and were a little pricey.  But I have to say, they are really good, probably the best that I have tried.
I purchased the Sharpie locally, I'm not sure where, probably Michaels or DeSerres.  They are easy to find.
I found the Daler Rowney paint pen at Walmart yesterday.  It came in a package of two, one white and one black.  I t was $4.97 for the package.  I was very pleasantly surprised wit these pens.  I had not seen them before, but am glad to find a paint pen that is locally available.  The Decocolor paint pen was purchased at the Creative Festival I attended a couple of months ago in Toronto.  I got three of them and was assured by the booth owner that they were great and would work on anything.  I will let you judge the results.
I bought my Pitt pen at Michaels or DeSerres.
I got my Uniball pen online and my Gelli Roll gel pen locally.
The first substrate I tried them on was black card

The Posca pens were great, the Sharpie soaked in to the uncoated card quite a bit.  The Daler Rowney pen worked quite well.  The Decocolor paint pen almost disappeared into the black card.  It actually shows up better in the photo than it does in reality.  The Pitt pen was okay and the Uniball and Gelliroll gel pen were fine on black card.

I decided to coat the card with matte and gloss Mod Podge, as most mixed media pieces would be coated with this or some sort of medium.

They all worked fairly well once the card was coated.  Interestingly, the finer Posca pen splattered a little bit when writing over the texture of the brush strokes.  The Decocolor pen worked much better, but is still somewhat translucent. The PITT pen is not super opaque.

As you can see, the results on the gloss Mod Podge are the same as the Matte  Mod Podge.

I also had an extra fine Sharpie paint pen, but disappointingly, I could not compare it because the pen would not write.  The paint did  come out, but the pen just did not work.  I have to mention that I have found that to be the case with other Sharpie paint pens.  They work great the first time I use them, but when I go back and try use them a second or third time, they often don't work well.

So in conclusion, this is what I have found.  To me, the Posca pens were the best, although I was a little disappointed in the splattering of the fine pen on texture, because I know any of my mixed media projects will be textured and it would be nice to have a fine pen for writing.  I am hoping that it may "calm down".  My second favouite, for my purposes, is the Daler Rowney pen that I just discovered.  It works well and it is reasonably priced.  I wish it came with a finer nib, but this will probably be my "go-to" pen as it is economical and available locally.  I will be on the look-out for a finer line paint pen that is more easily attainable that gives good results.  I will let you know how that goes  I will not purchase the Decocolour pen again.  I love my PITT pens and will always have a use for them, so I will always keep a white one on hand.  Lastly, I really like my Gelli Roll gel pen and my Uniball gel pen.

I hope this has been of some help to those of you who may be wondering what kind of white pen to purchase.

Thanks for stopping by, have an awesome and artful day!