How To Easily Apply Gold Leaf To Your Artwork!

Jen demonstrates how to easily apply gold leaf to acrylic for an amazing reverse gilding effect that she first showed off in her vintage hand-painted signmaking build. Follow along this tutorial as Jen shows how to brush on gilding adhesive and place the faux gold leaf using cost-effective materials and tools!

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Shot and edited by Josh Self
Music by Jinglepunks

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[IBIScnc]

Can we please get more Jen on the channel, she always brings great insights and a joy to whatever project she is working on.

[rune]

Those unintended gaps are called holidays because it is a joke - the guilding (or paint) that was supposed to be in that spot didn't show up for work and thus took a vacation. Loved this video - I hope Jen shows up a bit more often here on Tested. I always learn so much from her videos! Thanks Jen!

[gregfeneis]

Very cool, Jen! My grandma kept a reel to reel audio library and marked the spines of all the reel albums with gold leaf. She showed me how she did it once when I was very young.

[peterkelley]

Jen goes off the deep-end to try gold leaf; with pretty decent results. Good job Jen.

[danielwendt]

Jen, Awesome video! love how you've gathered new and old techniques together for your own creative take. Excellent work!

[kitkimbrough]

Watching the pros guild with different kinds of leaf like its so easy takes years and a special kinda methodical touch, and patience to control the impossible!!...The sizing has alot of difficult things to get right, abd the gold is really difficult to handle at first, and everything has an effect on end result, get good leaf, and good sizing and alot of trial and error, but when you finally get it right, it's worth it!!....Gold leafing is the only way to get beautiful results, no paint compares!!...

[ledzep]

I tried this a few years back just to try it out and was blown away by the results. I made my own size from gelatine leaf and water, As I remember this form of size shrinks and pulls the gold leaf flat as it dries and this resulted in the mirror like finish you mentioned, so slower drying may have an advantage. It's also important to apply some sort of protective finish on the reverse before the mask is removed to protect the gilding from getting scratched, such as varnish, lacquer or spray paint (If you use a gold or even yellow paint it hides any small holes or gaps too).

[jasnmar]

This was completely outside of my wheelhouse, but was interesting to watch. I really enjoyed the "this isn't the right tool" and the "this isn't the proper way" things, but it was a way to get to an outcome. "Without totally wrinkling the crap out of it" lol.

[Bobby]

This is absolutely maker asmr 😃, nice work!

There are metal leaf sheets out there which are sold with a thin, see-through plastic backing. It's sturdy enough to let you cut the sheet with scissors, but it slides off without tearing the metal once you've applied it. I know Speedball's "Mona Lisa" imitation gold leaf is like that. It's more expensive though, so once again you have the cost vs. convenience tradeoff to make.

Being good at this stuff is really tricky -- Jen did a fantastic job showing how it's done!

[llllllllllllllllllllllllIIIIl]

she keeps referring to how the pros do it but YOURE A PRO YOURSELF JEN! the signs are beautifuuuul

[Nilboggen]

I use wax paper to pick up the gold leaf and smooth it with my fingers while it's still under the wax paper. You will have a much smoother result that way.

[nathkrupa]

Nice one ma'm thanks for sharing this video.

[mezmarionybarra]

Bravo ❣️ Wonderful❣️ thank you so much and how lovely and relaxing is your voice❣️

[sabertoothanimations]

As someone who Decorates in Western-styled stuff a lot
I will most certainly be trying this at some point

[psaldorn]

Got some nice ideas for a keychain from this!

[reyesjnj]

Ahhh this was the so easy to follow and she did an awesome tutorial this was cool

[glldvmi]

Yea Jen is on
I'm tired of seeing Norm. Lol.

[Tgrchn]

My Restoration class included a Visit at a Gilders Workshop
He was... 60+ back in 2011

His Face was all sparkly because a trick he used was wiping the Gildingbrush on his cheeks to pickup some skin-oil so the leafgold sticks better, his theory was it 'does double duty, picking up oil and slightly charge the hairs staticly' and you can see it
If he hovered the brush a few mm over the leaf it started to move