Dina Kowal Creative: Impression Obsession DT Challenge: It's Snow Time!

The Impression Obsession team's challenge today is to create a project featuring snow! I have had several requests for a little tutorial on foiling with regular dies, so I thought I'd combine that with my post today. Hope you enjoy! Here's my card:

I picked out this Snowflake Background die to work with - I used washi tape to create a hinge to hold it in place on my cardstock, then tucked foil underneath it with the shiny side up against the die. This is Spellbinders' heat reactive foil, and it has a plastic release liner on top of the shiny side. That pulls away and the shiny foil stays when it's activated with heat and pressure.

Heat the die on the foiling platform according to system directions, and then run it through a die cutting machine with the plates provided. I added a couple of cardstock shims to my sandwich to make sure there was enough pressure applied.

Tadaaaaaaaaaa! So foiling with cutting dies is a little different than the foiling plates, since the foil is only activated by the cutting lines, and those are so narrow. I left my design simple here, but you can use those outlines for watercoloring if you like, to give a bolder look to your background.

This Sand Eraser is a handy tool for removing any extra foil that might have stuck between the lines - sometimes that happens in big spaces or if there's excess foil (you can see a little at the edge of the photo above).

The heat reactive foil will also stick to adhesive, so I lined a panel with wide double tape, and pressed some foil around the edges for a shiny border.

You can see the plastic liner below, as the sheet is pulled away.

I added a small tag with some tiny snowflakes just for a simple accent - I didn't want to cover up the foiling too much so I'll save the sentiment for the inside of the card.

Foil is hard to photograph, so here's an attempt at showing the shine...