Who Knew!!!

Beautiful Foiling Using My Laser Printer 

Well, I didn't know you could use a hot laminator and a laser printer to do foiling!! At least not until my daughter in law's Mom needed some invitations and requested rose gold foiling.  She told me that she saw a tutorial on YouTube using a laminator, so, of course, I had to check it out.

I already had some foil that I use in my tee shirt applications, but, I was unaware of the laminator usage.  I pulled out my old laminator, but noooo, it wouldn't work, the foil just didn't stick. I believed that it just wasn't getting hot enough.It's really really old, but Some people say it's the printer that makes the difference.  Well, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new laminator, but couldn't find one that I was sure of, so I decided to purchase the Minc Foiling Machine.  It's made for this, and it has 6 temperature settings, AND . . . . It was on sale, not the itty bitty 6" one, but the large 13". and if you know me, bigger is better!!  The 6" is also only a few dollars than the sale price of the 13".

Now as I anxiously awaited my new "Minc", I was worrying about my printer, I was hoping that it would work well with the foil.  The toner is what gets heated when it goes through the Minc and that is what makes the foil stick. So I wasn't sure, and I sure didn't want to invest in a new printer. Yeah, it arrived!!  I used their sample pieces and ran them through the machine . . . . BEAUTIFUL!!! I didn't think to take a picture before I foiled them, but the designs were simply black.

Now, for what I had been worrying about, my laser printer!! I have a Brother MFC9130CW Wireless All In One Printer and have not always been happy with the results, but, for the most part, it's okay, it only acts up on certain specialty papers.  Well, I printed out a few images using the black only setting and . . . WOW!! Just check these out, the pics just don't do it justice.

Laser printed, no foiling

OH, YEAH!!!

Really hard to get a good photo, but, these are amazing.  So smooth and professional looking.  I purposely used an image that had a lot of detail, and let me tell you, it is flawless!!

So, I ordered some new watercolor foil

I used an image I found online with the word Paris and printed it with my Brother MFC9130CW Wireless All In One Printer, just to practice.  That's the beauty of being able to use my printer, there is no limit to the designs and styles that you can produce using your favorite graphics program such as Adobe Illustrator or Coreldraw.

I was using a piece that had already been used for practice, so the few little black areas that show are where there was no foiling on the paper, but, you get the idea, it is absolutely beautiful.  It is so hard to get good photos of these though.

This is also a vintage style image, so the style is more of a hand drawn effect, the foiling is not rough.  It is also the watercolor, so there are color variations.

Needless to say, I was sooo happy that my laser printer did such a good a job, I had read some one's blog who had purchased and returned about 6 laser printers before she found one that produced the quality she wanted.

I bought my printer in March 2014, so I've had it for a few years, but, it works amazingly for this technique, or at least the one I purchased does.