A laser printer or copier is required for the initial printing along with some laser heat transfer foil. For the heat transfer, a regular laminator is recommended or you can also use a household clothes iron with a little practice.
Metallic foil is a good way to attain a shiny gold or silver effect which cannot be achieved with regular printer ink. The end results are shiny, realistic looking metallic effects.
Here’s a short list of transfer foil projects that I have seen using heat transfer foil:
• Christmas card borders and toppers
• Card making
• Scrapbooking projects
• Business cards
• Book covers
• Wedding invitations
• Party invites
• Craft projects
What you will need:
• Some laser heat transfer foil
• A laminator for the heat transfer (a clothes iron can also be used)
• A laser printer or laser copier to print out a black picture, design or text.
Before I owned a laser printer, I used to visit my local Staples store to print out the images that I wanted to use onto plain white paper for a small fee which is an alternative for those who do not own a laser printer.
The Process
Depending on your project, you will need to locate the pictures or text to use for the foil transfer. For instance, if you were doing a scrapbooking project about horse riding, you might want a large golden horse on the front of your project or maybe a Unicorn or Pegasus.
For this project, I would start at Google images, and do a search for “horse silhouette.” This will produce dozens of black images of horses for me to choose from. If you need a large picture, you can adjust the images that Google return by clicking onto “large” images only. Once selected, save the image by right clicking / save followed by printing out with a laser printer.
Step 1) Roughly cut your image out and put to one side.
Step 2) Grab a plain piece of A4 paper and place this on the floor
Step 3) Place your image, picture side facing up, on top of your plain sheet base.
Step 4) cut a piece out of your foil, slightly bigger than your image and place this on top of your image metallic side facing up.
Step 5) Now place either a piece of greaseproof type paper or another piece of plain paper on top of your foil to make a 4 level sandwich.
Step 6) Turn your laminator on, wait for it to reach temperature and then pass the sandwich through the laminator.
Wait a few moments to cool down, remove the top sheet / greaseproof type paper and then slowly peel the foil away from the picture. You will see that the foil has heat transferred onto the black picture, leaving it coated with gold and ready to apply to your project.
How to Make Your Own Holograms
Laser heat transfer foil also comes in a holographic form too allowing for all kinds of images, logo’s, pictures or text to be coated with a special silver spectrum effect. Again, the same steps apply as above allowing for great holographic effects for business cards and craft projects.
Foil Size
Foil sheets come in various sizes, the most popular being in sheets of 15cm x 3metres. This amount will provide you with enough material for potentially hundreds of Christmas card borders or toppers or thousands of business card logo’s etc.
Heat Transfer
Using a laminator is the most popular method to use for the heat transfer. Just one pass through the machine is enough to completely coat your once black image or text with a metallic effect. If you do not have a laminator, try using a household cloths iron instead. Many people use this with no problems.
Depending on the type of laminator or iron that you have, you may need to substitute the greaseproof top sheet with a second piece of plain paper to slightly reduce the temperature as the paper lets slightly less heat through than the heat transfer greaseproof type paper. I use the greaseproof type paper personally as this works best with my laminator.
It really is simple to make very creative designs and brighten up everyday objects if you take a little time and follow this guide. Do a search on eBay or Google for heat transfer foil and craft paper and you should be presented with various pack options for Gold, Silver and Hologram.
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