Techniques with Hot Foil Plates

Hot Foiling Letterpress + Foil Thank You

Jul 18, 2024 Rachel Kleinman

Hello Creatives! This is Rachel Kleinman and today I'm sharing a couple of ways to use your Letterpress + Foil Plates, specifically the beautiful Thank You Flowers Plate.

I started by foiling the flowers with Pewter Metallic Foil using my Glimmer Hot Foil machine – twice on Deluxe Smooth White Cardstock, twice on Peony cardstock, and twice on Kiwi cardstock.

By foiling on a colored cardstock first, it makes the coloring portion so much easier! I used my small blending brushes to ink the Peony cardstock flower with Soft Blossom, and then the centers are inked with Azalea. I did fussy cut the pink flowers with my detail scissors, and then inked the edges with Butter Bar (story time – Butter Bar is the first Hero Arts ink I ever purchased like 10 years ago... and I've still never needed to re-ink it). The leaves were all inked with Green Hills.

Next, it's time to fussy cut the leaves! I did a lazy-person's fussy cut, because you don't need to fully trim the leaves as we will place the cut flower on top. You'll see I also foiled the flower twice on an A2 panel – this helps to guide the placement of the leaves as you glue them back down. You'll also find your Hero Tools Tweezers very handy to help place the small leaves!

Then just glue the cut flower on top!

Alas, I'm never satisfied! I inked the centers of the flowers a little more with Azalea ink, and then decided to ink the edges of the A2 panel with Arctic ink.

To complete the card, I heat foiled the 'thank you' that comes with the set onto Nautical cardstock, and did a loose fussy cut around the edges. I trimmed the panel by 1/2" and glued it onto an Arctic cardstock base. I did add some black gel pen dots to the flower centers as well. Of course, some Translucent Pink Enamel Dots are perfect to finish it off.

Now it's time to share the purple card!

The purple card uses the two flowers that were originally foiled on white cardstock. I did a loose fussy cut of each one. Did you know you can color over foil with your alcohol markers? I love how my Copics still let the foil shine through after coloring.

The background of this card is surprisingly my favorite part. I heat foiled the Vine Hot Foil Plate with the absolutely beautiful Prism foil – when you hold it to the light it looks like rainbowy goodness (new word).

The purple flowers were glued on top of the foiled background. The 'thank you' sentiment is foiled onto Eggplant cardstock and adhered with foam tape. The card is finished off with an Eggplant A2 card base.