Adding Foil to Free Printables

This is a sponsored post on behalf of American Crafts. All opinions and squeals of joy are my own.

Eeee, I’m so excited to share the Anna Griffin edition of American Craft’s Minc machine with you all! I play with a fair amount of new craft products every month but rarely am I so absolutely addicted to them straight out of the box. Thanks to Minc, adding foil to free printables is crazy easy and fun!

Get Your Minc On

So, first things first, you’re going to have to get your hands on the Minc machine. No worries, I got your back! The Anna Griffin 6″ Minc is going to be available on HSN at midnight on Monday, May 11th (get there quick because these deals always sell out!) It’s going to be chock-full of supplies and accessories so that even if you don’t have access to a laser printer, you can start “Minc-ing” right away. The kit retails for $150 but since it’ll be Today’s Special on HSN, you can get it for just a fraction of the cost!

Inspiration Strikes

The second I pulled out my Minc (after hugging and squeezing it, of course!) I knew I wanted to experiment with adding foil to my free printables. Since they’re mostly outlines, I had to go back into photoshop and fill most of the shapes. Easy peasy!

Honestly, the hardest part of this whole process was having to go get copies at a store with two crazy little monkeys in tow. Since the Minc only works with toner ink, I’m totally looking into buying a laser printer. My neighbors will think I’m totally crazy for getting my Minc on at 2 in the morning!

The Process

After your prints are ready, all you have to do is sandwich the print and a foil sheet in between a plastic carrier sheet (included in kit) and run it through the machine on the right heat setting. I found the suggested “4” setting to be a bit high and had better results at “3.” Once out of the machine, just pull back the plastic and foil sheet to reveal your gorgeous gilded image!

Helpful Hints for Minc

Ok, so I went a bit crazy and added foil to 8 different Tried & True original coloring prints. Yeah, not too sure what I’m going to do with all of them but it gave me a lot of hands on time with the machine so I have a few hints to pass on to you:

• Be careful with the adhesive on the protective covers. It can rip up your foil sheet in a matter of seconds as you try to remove it! (Should have listened to you, Tauni!)
• Make sure your image is small enough to fit on one sheet of foil (or get larger foil sheets!) I tried to do it with two sheets for some of my larger prints and ended up with lines running across the letters (check out the third picture in this post.)
• You can add multiple colors as long as you can cut the foil sheets to fit. Make sure to use sharp scissors for cutting!
• Exposed toner is activated as it runs through the machine. I tried running a print through a number of times with different colors but the foil didn’t stick so well on the lower letters because the toner had been compromised with the first run-throughs. Another reason to make sure you have large enough foil sheets!

Glitter Too!

You can also add glitter to your projects with the glitter sheets included in the HSN Today’s Special kit. The instructions warn that the glitter sheets don’t work as well with detail so I used one of my free printables with a bold font and loved the look! The black letters are a bit visible through the glitter so I probably should have run it through a second time. Live and learn, right?

Bold & Gold

My absolute favorite was the “Love You Forever” coloring page! I love how bold the gold letters look next to the delicate arrows. Honestly, I think I like this print better with foil than I do as a coloring page! How sweet would this look framed for a baby?! Hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial on adding foil to free printables. Just think of all the options!