Crafters Corner : Gilding flakes- Tips & Tricks

Sunday, 5 July 2015

Gilding flakes- Tips & Tricks

Hi friends ,

Mega flakes are beautiful quality gilding flake. Manufactured in a traditional way this kind of flake is a time old process where no dyes are used. All the flakes are made by hand.The effects from these Mega Flakes is truly amazing.

The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold or any other metal.

Gilding Flakes can add a touch of luxury to your creations ... and its super duper easy to do it.The
flakescome in many colours and mixes to achieve any kind of look from Gold to Copper ... and everything in between. I use cosmic shimmer glitter glue to stamp and gild.

And there tons of different ways to use them. today we will be looking at only the basics of gilding.

Packaging & storage

The gilding flakes come in small tightly compressed featherlight plastic containers and there doesn't seem to be much in there ... until you open the lid and see the goodness.

*Its suggested that we must keep a larger container ready to empty the flakes into, because its very difficult to get them back into the small container.

Things you will essentially need

Gilding flakes of your choice

scrubber -use this to burnish the flakes into the adhesive you're using and remove the fines (excess flakes).

Glitter glue/doube sided tape/spray adhesive/sticky embossing powder/sticky sheet

soft brush

Foam piece to apply the glue .

Some important tips:

The flakes are very light and static do not work near a window and also keep your Fan and AC off.

If the flakes are left at room temperature they will swell to give you much more that you had.

Do not cough ,sneeze or sigh when working with the flakes ....or u will land up with flakes flying everywhere;)

When you will apply the glue on the stamps wash them immediately as you don't want to spoil the costly stamps.

Place you project on a scratch paper, to catch the fines and this makes it easy to funnel the flakes back to the jar

Pour a lot of flakes over the sticky surface tap them with your fingertips ,make sure there is no stickiness left. Be generous to use the flakes

Swatches of Gilding flakes

When we buy the flakes they they come in many different colour mixtures and they all add that little touch of oomph and luxury to any card/project that we make.

The swatches for the ones i have are :

How to use the Gilding Flakes

I wanna share some of the methods and surfaces these flakes works perfectly. i also wanna warn you that if u don't like getting messy this is not what you should try. ....it is indeed a messy product and even if u try keeping it in a box u will still find it all over your workspace and clothes. i love getting messy and i totally love the gilding flakes:)

I have made two videos for you to understand the process of gilding .
part 1- Basics of gilding flakes