The 4th of July totally snuck up on me this year, I can’t believe it’s in only a couple of weeks. To celebrate the holiday I designed these Minc. foil ready 4th of July printables, I’ve also included a set of free printables for you that don’t require foil application. If you like this post you may enjoy my DIY Gold Foil Artwork project. This post is sponsored by American Crafts.
I’ve had fun playing around with my Minc. foil applicator the last few months, now that I feel I’ve got the hang of it I thought I’d try out making some of my own art to run through the machine.
I seem to be lacking in 4th of July decorations. I think it’s because we are gone a lot in the summer and I’m not usually home much to decorate. This year after our trip to Williamsburg and Washington DC I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic and thought that I’d design a few projects for the 4th.
I’ve got a few more projects up my sleeve to share with you in the next two weeks, and first up is a fun printable.
I have always loved the lyrics to God Bless America, it’s always been one of my favorite patriotic hymns that we sing in church (btw… I can’t sing, at church I can get away with it as my voice is usually completely drowned out.. thank goodness.) After a bit of research I discovered that the song was written by Irving Berlin (you know, White Christmas??).
There are two ways to use this printable 1: Print out the color version at home (it’s designed to fit in an 8″ x 10″ frame) and 2: Print out the black and white version and add foil to it to make a custom foil print.
The first thing you need to know if you’re going to apply foil to this print, is that the foil does not stick to INK it sticks to TONER. So if you don’t have a laser printer or copier at home you need to take it to the office store to make copies. That’s what I did. It’s really cheap to make black and white copies at cardstock. I think I spent $5 total and I made a bunch of copies in case I messed up.
Let me tell you something that I discovered during this process. The place you get the copies makes a big difference. Make sure before you leave that the print is dark enough. I started out making copies at store #1 and they worked brilliantly… Later I decided to change the design, so I took the printables to get copied again to place #2 and the copies from place #2 did not work!
I got black spots on my foil. When comparing the two prints I realized that the second set of prints did not copy dark enough. So if you do this, make sure you double-check the copies before you leave. You can spot the difference in the photo below.
So let’s talk about applying the foil! That’s the fun part!
Cut your foil to size and place it on top of the print the color side facing UP. Insert into the carrier sheet and feed through the Minc. machine set on #3.
Remove it from the machine and the carrier sheet and peel off the foil to see what you get! This is always my favorite part of the process.
(design one that I later changed)
I ended up applying all different colors of foil to my prints, here you can see the gold and royal blue.
Next I started experimenting with different foil techniques. One of my favorites was to “Frankenstein” the foil onto the print. I realized that what ever foil is TOUCHING the paper is color that sticks. After I realized that you could overlap the foils I started playing around with different color combinations.
To keep the foil from moving around in the carrier sheet I just used a bit of washi tape to secure it. Here’s a tip if you try this. Use a “throw away” copy of the printable as a template to cut out the foil using an exacto knife. It cuts VERY easily!
Next I played around with printing the design in steps. Step one for foil, then step two for ink from the printer.
Above I applied two colors of foil onto a sheet that is printed without the center lyrics. I then ran the foiled sheet through the printer to add the lyrics.
Voila! 3 color print!
Before you frame your print make sure to trim it down to 8″ x 10″
If you’d like to play around with applying different foil and print combinations I’ve uploaded 4 different versions of the design to the TEMPLATES page.
There is one with:
-center text only
-center text and title
-lyrics only
-entire print
To download them hop on over to the templates page directions for downloading are on the top of the page.
If you’d like to give the Minc. foil applicator a try you can get them at you local craft stores, Jo-Ann, Michaels and on Amazon!
Supply List for project:
Minc. Foil Applicator by Heidi Swapp
