basic gold leafing how to…
Gold leaf is gorgeous, easy, and shockingly messy in a “why does the gold leaf go everywhere?!?” Kind of way
Start by brushing on adhesive size. You can use any brush but for large areas I find foam brushes to be easier. The size is like super runny glue…or maybe slightly gluey water. You’re going for a thin, even coat. I usually try not to do more than a square foot or so at a time.
Let your size dry. The bottle says 15 minutes…life says, whenever it turns clear and slightly sticky. It can vary A LOT based on your material and how absorbent it is. On this lampshade it was about ten minutes, on a flower pot I did today it was about four minutes.
Once your adhesive size is clear and slightly tacky you put on the gold leaf. I have two basic approaches…the “lay the whole sheet out and push it flat because I’m gold leafing this whole thing” approach and the “pull off small bits at a time or take small bits and clumps that come off and press them back down because we’re going for weathered and not fancy” (shown in the picture of the flower pot).
Either way small bits and flakes will come off. However you put your leaf on it’s much easier to handle it with the tissue paper that comes in between each sheet. Once your fingers are sticky you’ll look like Midas for the rest of the project. It’s not a bad idea to push and brush gently with a totally dry brush to help it adhere.
Once you’re done with the area you did first, overlap it slightly with more adhesive size and keep going. You’re going to have tiny holes and places where the adhesive doesn’t quite catch that you’ll have to go back over at the end but this helps minimize that.
If you’re laying full sheets down you’ll get small lines where you can see the edge of the sheets (I drew some arrows in to show you) and you can just brush a tiny amount of size into the lines and cover them with a bit of leaf and they’ll go away.
Probably the best part of gold leaf is how forgiving it is. You can go over areas several times, mess up coverage on an edge and just go over it and redo it and at the end of the project it’s all gold!
Once you brush off any excess leaf with a dry brush you can do a thin layer of duraclear to seal it (I do 2-3 coats on things like trays that will get a lot of wear).
And voila! You now know how to gold leaf ALL THE THINGS