Thistlework Design Calligraphy Studio

It’s that time of year again… I’m back at it, gilding winners’ names on the golf tournament plaques for the local country club.

Did you know that if you’re working with loose leaf gold, but find yourself wishing you had patent leaf gold so things could go more quickly and you’d waste WAAAAY less gold… you can actually “make” your own using a sheet of glassine. (I mean, we all love watching little flakes of gold floating around, but I *do* like to try and conserve as much as I can.) You may already have some glassine for the purpose of burnishing. It is a smooth and glossy semi-transparent paper, kind of like wax paper — but not waxy. Even though it is “air, water, and grease resistant”, you can press it against your cheek or neck — just like you would with your flat gilders tip brush to pick up loose leaf gold — and get just enough natural oil from your skin on the glassine to “grab” when you lay it carefully down on a loose leaf sheet of gold in a booklet. Just give a little press evenly across the sheet and then carefully, holding the very edge of the glassine, slowly lift and the whole leaf of gold will come up with it. While the “hold” is not as strong as that of true patent gold leaf, if you move slowly enough when you go to place it where you want to transfer the gold, it should be pretty cooperative.

I’m fortunate to have an old box of 3-inch square science lab “weighing sheets“ (essentially the same as what we would buy from a gilding materials supplier) that another artist in Masscribes once put out on a materials swap table at one of our meetings. (Don’t you just love it when art and science come together? 😆)