I’ve decided to dive into the hot foiling trend. I never expected to actually do it. The cost of a foiling machine, the cost of new foiling plates, the space to store it all and getting caught up in the latest and greatest were all a bit overwhelming. And yet. And yet I was feeling a sense of FOMO. It was almost akin to the early days of die cutting; it was the latest and greatest. But would it be an expensive fad to fade away? Die cutting ended up being a staple crafting method. I believe hot foiling is as well.

My shifting thinking toward hot foiling collided with a ridiculously cost saving Black Friday deal. I accidentally ran across a hot foiling machine for a discontinuing price of $25. I was stunned. And also sold! The next step was how to go about adding some hot foiling plates to my stash in a reasonably affordable way.

Enter another collision of events. I had been subscribing to the Freckled Fawn memory keeping kit and cancelled it back in November due to poor customer service. I thought I would take a break from subscriptions for a while again. However, the Spellbinders kits have been in my periphery for a while. When I found the hot foil machine, signing up for a monthly foil plate subscription just seemed to make sense. I could slowly add to my supplies and also some monthly happy mail. I may even try to keep the goodies a surprise if I can manage to avoid all the social media reveals!

So, on with my first happy mail goodies. I received the December “kit” near to Christmas and held off making the unboxing video until after the holidays. So here is what the December set involved.

On the left you can see the outlines of all the pieces included: The larger floral corner, two sentiment plates and the coordinating three dies to cut out the pieces. The center shows off how things will look when used as designed. To complete the monthly kit there is a roll of hot foil. This time it was matte gold. How can you have shiny foiling that is also matte? I don’t know the magic they use, but the results are beautiful!

I had a learning curve to overcome when setting to work. After a few mistakes I got the hang of it and the results were amazing. I quickly got ideas on projects and made it happen. I created a set of cards for Galentine’s Day as well as a scrapbook layout using some scraps.

Neither of these images do justice to the shine of the foiling. You should watch the video to get the full effect.

I hope you’ll join me later in the moth as I unbox and explore the January glimmer products. I’m looking forward to adding more shiny goodness to my projects this year.

Until next time, have an artful day!