playing with gilding flakes and sticky stuff.

Two products I've had forever, and never actually tried out. A tub of Judikins Sticky Stuff embossing powder, and some metal leaf. I also have some tubs of gilding flakes in various colours- rose gold, variegated green etc.
I thought I'd try it first with this stamp, Wishing Tree from Lavinia stamps.
Basically, you stamp your image in a pigment ink, I used plain old Versamark for mine, but as you can use this product with glitter as well, you could also use a coloured ink. I also worked on black card, as I thought the image would 'pop' more.

Sprinkle the Sticky Stuff embossing powder on as you would normally. Its quite coarse grained, so this is never going to work well with a highly detailed stamp, so choose accordingly.







Tip off the excess and heat with your heat gun.What you will discover is that it melts VERY quickly, much faster than normal embossing powder, and apparently it is important NOT to overheat, as it will loose its sticky. So as soon as you see it start to melt, move your heat gun.

However, once it is melted, it stays tacky for a long time, so you have plenty of time to work with it.  I lay a sheet of the leaf over the image, and now you need to burnish it well with your fingers, to make sure its attached to all the image. This will also start to flake off all the sheet not stuck to anything, so a sheet of scrap paper underneath your project, to catch the bits, is advisable. As is  not sneezing, coughing or breathing hard! Be very gentle with moving any sheets of paper/card, and DO NOT tap the back to get stray bits off- the slightest air movement sends this stuff everywhere- it makes glitter look positively restrained! After you've got most of the excess off, you need to go over it again to tidy it up, and I found a stiff paintbrush was ideal. The fine brush I used to remove any stray specks of the embossing powder.
Next I thought I'd try a more solid image, so stamped a row of mushroom groups, and a word stamp, again by Lavinia stamps.

This worked quite well, it definitely looks better on a more solid image.

Here I tried a row of Dandelion heads, Lavinia stamps. There are three in the set, but after I'd put the flake on, it didn't work so well.Two of the heads just ended up as a solid block, so I put this to one side and tried again, just using the head that came out well.

The lines of the image are far enough apart on this one for it to work, and I tried flakes on this one, a variegated copper.




 
 

The process is the same though, I found dabbing a clump onto the Sticky Stuff worked well, then burnish with your fingers, finishing with the brush.

Next up I wanted to see if I could create a scene, so I tried the Two Fairy Houses stamp, and although its quite detailed,the image remained clear enough to use.I used the sheet leaf for them, which is called Abalone. Above I stamped Trailing Vine, and used the Variegated green flake for those.

The Sticky Stuff stays tacky for a very long time, so you have plenty of time to get your leaf/flake on, there's no need to rush. With the flake,it was easier to pick a clump up in my fingers and dab it on, rather than tipping a whole pile over the image.

I added a couple more trails, some small and large mushrooms,cherry blossom branches and finally some dragonflies. The dragonflies were done in silver, the 'shrooms in Variegated Copper.When you add more images, you need to check previously flaked parts for powder, as it will stick to it, and when you heat it you will get leaf sticking where you don't want it. A few of my leaves have silvery bits on them.
With the Wishing Tree earlier, I also tried adding a Footpath stamp, and didn't like how it came out. So from this one, along with the Dandelions heads row that I didn't like,and a few off cuts from trimming down the Fairy Houses image I punched out squares. Sheer fluke, I got 9 squares.

So I matted them as a mosaic onto black card, then some gold card run through the 'bug with an embossing folder, then onto black again. Don't know why, but it screams 'Oriental' at me. Maybe the colours, maybe the cherry blossom. I don't know, lol.

I gave the Mushrooms row the same treatment.















I added a couple of Dragonflies to the Dandelion Heads row too,  in a silver/gold mix.
 So these will get turned into cards over the coming week,and I will be trying the Sticky Stuff out with glitter, as I was very impressed with how well it worked.

Supplies:
 Metal Leaf, Eberhard & Faber , or there is a Fimo Brand too.
 Metal Gilding Flake, mine came from Crafty Notions , bought at the NEC
Judikins Sticky Stuff embossing powder
Versamark Ink
 Stamps
 A lot of Patience!!!!!