new technique? Silver Leaf & Sticky Back Canvas (step by step)

Today's post is all about texture & a little sparkle:

texture from canvas and sparkle from silver leaf.

It's a LONG one!
I got a bit carried away with DIY fabric bits
& heat embossed stamping:

The canvas trim above is made with my new silver leaf resist technique (on the back of Claudine Hellmuth's sticky-back canvas) at least I think it's new but who knows, right? It's my birthday, so methinks I'll just be a complete goofball and say it's the newest & most funnest thing since sliced bread. heehee.

Of course, the heat emboss stamping is age-old. I heat embossed my stamp faves from Skipping Stones Design (their design elements in white for the top & turquoise for the bottom). And used a couple of brown Distress Inks to make it look like old wood (Vintage Photo & Walnut Stain).

And here's the finished card:

It's a standard A2 size card (5 1/2 x 4 1/4)
with a little mini bouquet

1... step by step how to use the back of sticky-back canvas
to do silver leaf resist
2...variations: silver leafed Ribbon Doilies, sticker & hand cut resists
3... how to make the flower bouquet & put the card together

-1-

use the back of sticky-back canvas
to do silver leaf resist

Don't have silver leaf foil sheets?
You could simply use the front of the canvas to do a resist with stickers
and silver ink (heat embossed) or any colour of ink.

• Sticky-back Canvas by Claudine Hellmuth
• BasicGrey Ribbon Doilies (or something to act as a resist)
  
• Silver Leaf foil sheets (or gold leaf or other colours)
  
• Cotton glove or soft rag
  
• Matte Medium
• Bone folder, Patterned paper, water/mister
  

Using paper ribbon doilies as a resist for silver leafing:



This is so addictive! And it's easy. As usual, I make it sound a little complicated with my rambling & obsessing over details, but this really is an simple and very satisfying thing to do.



A} Cut a piece of Sticky back canvas to size
B}Peel off the backing
C}Stick something down on the sticky side to act as a resist
A}Cover it with silver leaf & press it down
A}Peel away the resist piece that you stuck down
A}If you want to use it as is, simply paint over the sticky un-silverleafed part with matte medium to eliminate stickiness...

...or you could continue on to experiment with paper transfer
(or inking it) to give contrast:



The photo above shows the result of adding a paper pattern
transfer after doing the silver leaf resist.
Here's a play-by-play of how it was all done:

This first tutorial uses the backing of Ribbon Doilies that you'd normally throw out, but you could use the Doilies themselves...



Step 1} Cut a strip of BasicGrey Ribbon Doilies & a strip of sticky back canvas the same size. Use the coloured piece or set it aside to save & use the backing instead Stick doily on the sticky side of canvas.



Step 2} Peel off the backing of the Sticky-back canvas & stick the backing onto the sticky back side. Use something to tamp the Ribbon Doilies backing down.

(Anything, other than your finger will do. This maintains the stickiness where the natural oils on your finger would reduce the stickiness.) No need to get the Ribbon Doilies strip tacked down 100%--the pressing of the silver leaf will do the rest.



Step 3} Lay the sticky side of the canvas down onto silver leaf foil.



Step 4} Fill in any gaps with spare pieces of silver leaf.



Step 5} Press down firmly to burnish the silver leaf onto the exposed sticky bits. The doily will act as a mask resisting the silver leaf in places: it's Magic!

A white cotton glove helps with pressing down quite well to get the little bits stuck in there, but you could use a soft cloth, or not. ;o)



Step 6} Peel the backing up to reveal your resist pattern. TIP: You can peel back slowly, like you would with a rub-on. That way, if any of the silver bits didn't stick through the ribbon doily, you can lay it back down & press firmly. Then, lift again to check if it fixed it.



The white places that were under the Ribbon Doilies strip will still be sticky.



Step 7} Seal it: If you want to use the piece as is (as a white & silver doily pattern) then protect the sticky bits with matte gel medium (clear paint like stuff that will take the sticky away but not leave shine)



Step 8} Add detail: You can use a metallic pen to add tiny dots or fix up any areas where the silver may not have stuck (this one is an old creative memories silver pen).



Teeny Potential for disaster: If you are bad like me and you leave the sticky exposed you are likely to get a mess-any spare silver bits floating around will stick to it & mess up the resist pattern (and/or dusty bits.) The photo above shows the result of leaving the sticky bits exposed.



Sneaky trick to protect the sticky bits: If you want to try paper transfer to get neat colour contrast and pattern, then you can protect the sticky bits by laying the backing onto it again temporarily while you gather supplies or wait until later.

-2-

Get Silver Leaf Ribbon Doilies too:

The tutorial above uses the waxy backing of the Ribbon Doilies that you would normally throw away, but if you use the paper Ribbon Doilies themselves then you can silver leaf them. Great for the ones you may not be in love with colour-wise or pattern-wise.



If you stick the coloured side of the BasicGrey ribbon doilies down onto the sticky side of the canvas (leaving the sticky backing of the doily facing up so the whole works are sticky) then you silver leaf the whole thing and peel the paper Ribbon Doilies up, you will get...

Silver leafed Ribbon Doilies. So perty.

OR you could simply leave them stuck on &
get a silver canvas piece with a lovely intricate texture:



(This one has 3 rows of the Ribbon Doilies strips and is well stuck onto the canvas).

Paper Transfer:

Here's how to combine the silver leafing with a paper transfer effect.

Claudine Hellmuth has a great video here showing you how to do her amazing paper transfer, You will likely just want to skip the scoring the back of the paper step that she shows you in the video--to avoid marking up the delicate silver leaf--as I describe in detail below in step 4...

Step 1} Simply lay the exposed sticky side (of the silver doily pattern you just made) onto patterned paper.



Step 2} Cut the sticky back canvas strip out of the patterned paper.

Some patterned papers seem to work better than others. BasicGrey works well. (Sadly, printing paper out of your inkjet printer will not work),

Step 3} Burnish it very well, pressing firmly to encourage the pattern paper to stick well (not shifting around too much though).

Step 4} To peel the back of the patterned paper off, wet it with a mini mister & roll away the wet paper backing. Usually with this technique you score the paper before wetting to make it easier to peel, but not with silver leaf or it marks it up.

and there you have it...


The silver bits on the canvas do look a little shinier in person
but doing the paper transfer does reduce the shine a little.

Sticker Resist:

For this version, instead of using the sticky BasicGrey Ribbon Doilies, I used GCD number stickers to do a resist (same method as the tutorial above).



The GCD stickers left a nice crisp edge when I peeled them off:

However, I did find the paper tended to stick a bit more, you could take some of the tackiness of your stickers off by sticking them on fabric first and then adding them to the sticky side of the canvas.

I just used scraps of silver leaf on the example above & was really pleased with the texture that gave the canvas.

I was curious to see if the white canvas that was left exposed would take ink:



And I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did take ink quite nicely. I used Victorian Velvet Distress inks and stitched around each letter.

Hand-cut Resist/Mask piece:
Want a more artistic option? Hand cut the backing to make custom masks.

The paper backing of the Sticky-back Canvas makes the perfect mask, since one side is waxy or waterproof and one side is papery to draw on. (It takes pencil perfectly.) The backing is also very easy to cut fine lines or detail into.

I drew this simple tree & cut it out to make a custom mask for the silver leaf resist:



Then I added a paper transfer with patterned papers from
BasicGrey's Basic White 6x6 collection (and an old retired BG Christmas paper)

The tree on the right shows you the score marks that will mark up the silver if you add that paper scoring step from Claudine's video demonstrating her paper transfer technique. (The scoring showing could actually be a neat look on it's own, but somehow I like it better without it).

(and putting the card together)

Some teeny paper & fabric flowers
& a little bouquet (and the card)...

Step 1} Stamp Skipping Stones Design elements to emboss & make a card. Pierce and stitch the canvas trim onto it (I cheated and coloured the thread with Copic marker).

Step 2} Make a stems for a bouquet:

A}Cut a few stems (these are 6 sections of thin white cloth floral wire).
B} Twist the wire pieces together.
C}Tie a wee bow around the middle. (this is cheap thin white satin ribbon coloured with a copic marker to match the thread).



Step 3} Attach the bouquet: Stitch bouquet stems onto card. I know this may seem like a lot of work, but I figure why mess with sloppy glue. When you think about it, sewing is:

A) ...actually faster (no holding the glue down and waiting for it to dry);
B) ...more relaxing (no fiddling and wondering if it will hold);
C) ...chemical free (no nasty fumes etc)...

...so I really love sewing things on.



Step 4} Add some flowers to cover the top of the stems.

The flowers were stitched on too (with little pearl seed beads) They flowers themselves were hand cut--made by mod podging fabric & book paper to cardstock that had a flower template printed on it (the tutorial & template for the flowers is here). The leaves are just single petals cut off of a flower, doodled on with pencil, and glued on.

Add a little tag cut from a book page:

...and th..th...th...that's all folks!

(clickable blogger pic for those who like them)

Thank You sooooh much for checkin' this out!


P.S. Here are the Skipping Stones Design stamps
used on this card (the Damask & the Wood Grain):

Timeless Textures and Grunge sets

click if you'd like to go visit their store

(I'm not affiliated with any of these companies, but in the interest of full-disclosure, I do want to mention that I was lucky enough to receive the stamps for free from Skipping Stones Design.) :0)