Thank God for Chocolate Coins!
You won’t believe the trouble I had trying to find suitable gold foil for the underside of my sun! In the previous post I showed you the transparent smalti laid onto some gold foiled tape. I thought this is the stuff I would use, I have a big reel of it, however it is sticky, but not sticky enough to stick to my cement board. I tried sticking it with silicone, but the glue already on it interfered with the adhesion. I tried various other foils I have lying about collected from the scrapstore. One was a gold book covering with “Taking Popular Music Seriously – Selected Essays – Simon Frith” printed on it. Interesting stuff… My silicone was old, so I tried some Bostik. Once in contact with the gold book covering it discoloured, shrivelled a bit and gave off an awful smell. Then I read on the tube “don’t use with cellulose paint” – maybe this was the gold colour of the book jacket material! Wow, how we learn!!
Hunting about the house for more foil, I found a bit in the children’s making box. Oh why, I was thinking, did I throw away the christmas wrapping paper after it had been ripped off the presents this year, I am sure there would have been some gold there, and to think I used to keep everything! The foil from the gold coins would have been good…but wait…both of my scrummy young teenagers did a spot of tidying at the weekend. They tidied their rooms, the first time since…well god knows when…which means…
…into the wheelie bin, head first…yuck…yuck again…hang on…here we are…two, three, four, five gold coin wrappers!
So here is the progress on my sun/tree mosaic. I grouted the tree and the leaves that are made from my handmade copper and gold leaf first, as I wanted the grout black on these bits as the rest may not be. I want the sun to have that close up magnified sort of look, so the different shades of foil and it being scrunched up beneath the red transparent smalti that I am going to use should do the trick.
Come back soon to see the final mosaic!
🙂
we sell gold foil in our webshop http://www.pearsonsglass.com/p471/Gold-Leaf-25-Sheets/product_info.html have u tried it?
Beautiful stuff, but too expensive at the mo for me unfortunately! I use cheap metal leaf, of course it wouldn’t work in fusing and it taints a bit when used in gilding but I don’t mind that. When I am a bit better off I might buy the real thing!! (The Venetian gold leaf glass I sometimes use is the real thing, but I have to use it sparingly as I am running out! But also I think making my own gilded glass from your gold leaf would work out financially favourably in comparison.
believe me the price isn’t because of a wacking profit margin -its just GOLD!