Beginner’s Guide to Craft Foiling

Beginner’s Guide to Craft Foils

It is undeniable that having metallic lettering, gold foil patterns and designs on invitation cards, gift tags, fabric, leather and other craft projects add an instant touch of elegance. But before you venture into using metallic foils or any other kind of foils on your project, it is important to have enough knowledge about the types of foils to be used. Here is a quick and simple guide to craft foils:

Heat-Activated Foils (also known as “Hot Foi or Hot Stamping Foil”)

As the name suggests, this type of foil requires heat for the foil design to be transferred to the material you want it on. A metal “die” resembling the design you want to recreate is needed. The die is put into a Hot Foiling machine like Couture Creations GoPress machine or Crafter's Companion Gemini Foilpress (or any other type of foil machine which can process heat-activated foils) and heated. The foil is then sandwich between the die and the medium (for instance, paper) and when pressed, the foil with the design of the die will adhere to the surface of the paper.

Examples of Heat-Activated Foils are Couture Creations GoPress Foils, Spellbinders Glimmer Foils, and Gemini Foil Press Foils. All of these brands offer full roll foils. Let’s take a glimpse of some of these foils:

Couture Creations GoPress Foils come in a wide variety of heat activated foil colors and patterns. Crafters can also experiment on these foils using diecutting and embossing machines to create stunning accents and embellishments for cards, scrapbooks and other craft projects. Heat Activated foils is also used for Press Hot Foil Monogramming. A tip when working with this foil is to make sure to trim its sharp edges so there won’t be a lot of excess foil.

Spellbinders Glimmer foils also offers a huge range of heat activated foil colors and designs. Just like GoPress, Spellbinders is compatible with many diecutting machines and can work with many types of materials including paper, leather, cardstock, ribbon and textiles.

Aside from dies, you can create Rose Gold Prints/Letterings/Accents and other foil designs out of heat activated foils using Hot Foil Stamps. To do this, put hot foil stamp on the heat plate of your GoPress Machine then put the foil colored side down. Then put the paper or any other material you want to put the design on. Close the lid and heat it up for 30 seconds then wind slowly through and back.

Heat-Activated foils can be used with the laminator as well. However, the result is not as good as a foiling machine does. It takes trial and error to produce high quality foil prints. Also take note that you cannot run dies and hot foil stamps through the laminator since they will break.

Toner-Activated Foils (also known as Toner Reactive Foil - TRF)

If the first type of foil needed heat to make the foil design adhere to a material, toner-activated foils will need to stick to something where there is plastic. So you might ask why is it called toner-activated foil? The basic fact is regular laser printer and laser photocopier use “toner” (ink) containing 55 percent styrene plastic. Hence, any image or design created on a laser printer or laser copier can be colored by any Toner-Activated foil with the application of high heat and pressure over the said foil that presses on the toner image or design. The laminator is needed for the transfer to happen. Once you run it through the laminator, foil is peeled of so you get the newly foiled toner image.

For better and faster results, you can opt to go for using a Minc machine or Minc Foil Applicator instead of using a regular laminator. Just like the usual laminator, paper is fed through the Minc machine and when the Toner-Activated foil is subjected to the pressure and heat inside the machine, the foil sticks to the toner ink. The edge of a Minc machine over the regular laminator is that it has four pressure rollers that can apply pressure evenly on the surface and a heating element that covers the entire 12 by 12 inches of surface.

Using Toner-Activated Foils seems more convenient than using Heat-Transfer foils. But despite the ease of application, it is not perfect science. There are a lot of factors that can influence the final result of your project such as paper quality, the quality of the foil itself, toner quality and density, the temperature applied, and the speed of application. Hence, it takes practice to really nail the result you wanted. Here are some quick tips and tricks in doing toner foiling.

• Make sure to set the Laser Printer in the highest quality setting with the highest resolution because you want to get the blackest ink for the design.
• Use an uncoated and smooth paper so you would get consistency you wanted in your foiling. When the paper/material is not smooth enough you would most likely get patchy foiled prints.

 So the question is how does foil laminating works? First is you print your chosen design project using a Laser Printer. Second, you have to cut your foil to make sure you cover the right sections of your project design. Third, you place it into the paper cover. Fourth, you insert paper cover with the project design into the pouch laminator. Fifth, you simply peel off the foil sheets and now you have your foil designed project.

Iron On Adhesive Transfer Sheet

Before we end this blog, it is worth mentioning the iron on adhesive transfer sheet. This is perfect for foil on fabric transfer. What makes it good is that the transfer is permanent so it is perfect for wearables. It is heat-activated and can work on fabrics and papers. It is used with a foil transfer sheet and can be applied using an iron or a laminator.

Remember there are lots of foils in the market and they come in many colors and patterns. But make sure you get those with good quality. The basic rule in foiling is to get good quality paper and a good quality foil.