Hello All! So sorry I’ve been MIA. It hasn’t been for lack of interest but mainly just not getting home until late and having no time to get anything done! But with Nemo blowing through NY this weekend I had plenty of time to get some things done which I will be sharing this week. Today I am here to share my first try at gold leafing! It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. It certainly was messy but I knew that going in so I was prepared. The project all started when I purchased a frame and was looking for a print to put inside. I went on Etsy thinking I would purchase something. I came across a print of a wishbone and being the DIYer that I am I thought, “I can make that.” So I found an image on Google of a wishbone, printed it, traced it and then I used a gold marker to fill it in. That’s when my clever friend Emily asked, “why don’t you use gold leaf?” Gold leaf it was! I followed the same steps as before to trace the wishbone onto thick drawing paper. I purchased an adhesive pen and gold leaf sheets from Michaels.
I used the marker to trace the wishbone and then fill in the middle.
I waited about 10 minutes until the glue was tacky. Then I just took a sheet and laid it down on the print and pressed down with a brush where the glue was. If you look closely you can see the image in the sheet.
The next part is tricky! I slowly started tearing the parts of the sheet that I didn’t need and you’ll see from the next picture that it didn’t exactly stick perfectly.
To fill in the empty spaces I simply put down more glue and smaller pieces of gold leaf. I used my fingers a little more than the brush but the brush came in handy to get the clean lines on the edge.
After messing with it I was pretty pleased with the outcome. I do love the texture that the gold leaf creates!
If gold leafing isn’t your thing then you can use a gold marker like I had originally done.
It definitely doesn’t give you the same finish that gold leaf does but it’s an alternative.
Now that I’ve popped my gold leaf cherry I can’t help but want to gold leaf something else! Maybe another stab at the paper mache bowls? Wouldn’t an ampersand print in gold leaf be awesome too! Oh the possibilities!!
