Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Using Foil with Double-Sided Tape

Hello and welcome to another Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge!  This week's theme is "fun with foil."  I tried something I'd never done before and that is to use foil with double-sided tape.  It worked great, so I was excited about that discovery that I'm sure isn't new to many people, but was new to me.

I'm often looking for lazy ways to incorporate materials into my projects and I'd seen online tutorials about using glue with foil -- you dab some glue onto paper, let it get dry to whatever degree required, then rub the foil on it and the foil will stick to wherever you put the glue.  But for the life of me, I could not get this technique to work this time!  The glue was either too dry or too wet and it just wasn't happening.  It didn't help that I couldn't remember whether the gold side of the foil should be facing up or down.  Helpful hint: the gold or right side of the foil needs to facing up so you are looking right at it when you place it on your adhesive surface.  Motivated by annoyance, I grabbed my double-stick tape, put a piece of it on my paper, then stuck my foil sheet to that.  When I pulled the foil sheet up, it had stuck perfectly to the double-sided tape!  Who knew it could be that easy?  I certainly didn't.  So next I laid down rows of double-stick tape to form a sticky panel and laid the foil on that.  The foil covered it nicely.  With a larger area of gold-foiled paper now, I decided to cut some shapes out of it.  I laid some Seth Apter dies (Roundabout set) on my foiled paper.

I ran them through my Sizzix Big Shot and it cut great!  Now I had some shapes and negative shapes utilizing that flashy gold foil.  I like how there are lines and some splotchy places on the foil where the tape had gaps, etc.  I thought it gave it kind of a rustic vibe.

Next I built the card itself.  I used a deckled frame die to cut the base, sprinkled on some Paper Artsy Infusions powder and spritzed it with water.  I added some paint.  Then I grabbed one of the negative "frame shapes" of the gold foiled paper I just cut and added paint to that.

You know my dot addiction, so I stamped a section of dots (from Tim Holtz's Mixed Media 2 stamp set) on a piece of ledger paper and decided which foil shapes I would use on my project (the ring and the background frame).

But what would go inside the circle frame?  For me, sometimes the background of a project comes easily, but deciding what to put in the forefront as the focal point can be trickier.  I decided to explore my fabric stash.  I recently bought a panel of Tim Holtz's collage fabric, so I brought that out and found a section I liked.  I cut it out and glued it to my frame.

I used my typewriter to type out the word "focus", which I've been thinking about with the new year: how best to focus and spend time on the things that matter more than the things that don't.  I added that to my fabric piece and glued the panel to the background.  This card was done!  And shiny!  Here's a picture of it at an angle catching light to show off all that glorious gold foil

Here are the supplies I used that you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

• Mama Elephant Deckled Frames Die Set
• iCraft Gold Deco Foil
• Paper Artsy Infusions Color Stain: Rusty Car, Orange County, Lemoncello
• Tim Holtz Mixed Media 2 Stamp Set (Polka Dots)
• Paradise Teal Archival Ink
• Dina Wakley Paint
• Dina Wakley Ledger Paper 1
• Tim Holtz Multi Collage Fabric
• Strathmore Mixed Media Paper

I'm excited to see how you incorporate foil into your projects this week!  Upload your creations to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win a $25 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store.