So, a couple of weeks ago I shared my complete obsession with gold leaf and I confessed that I had never, in all of my crafty-artsy-DIY-creative days worked with gold leaf.
Well, that changed!  I’m on a GL (that’s what I call it now, I refer to it so often….) creativity trend.

The grain, colors, and texture of wood contrast so beautifully with the shiny, glamorous gold leaf.  It’s especially appealing to me when the gold looks a little rustic and natural.  Almost as if it was formed inside or on the wood.  he more natural, the better, in my opinion!
Wouldn’t this be completely beautiful incorporated into furniture design somehow?  Maybe along the edges of a table, or little gleaming bits on drawer handles, or around a rustic wood frame?  Just let your DIY soul take it and run. 

This DIY tutorial is for applying gold leaf on wood.  If you are working on paper or a less absorbent material (wood loves to drink all the glue you’re willing to feed it) the waiting time with change a bit.  Wait until the adhesive is almost dry (3-4 minutes with the Speedball adhesive pen – which I love) then apply the leaf.

A few options for handling gold leaf (it’s so crazy thin and loves to tear/flake/crumble-to-the-floor)
1. use a large soft-bristle brush, create static by rubbing it on paper, and pick up the leaf by rubbing the brush over it.  This will collect the whole leaf so you can use all of it.
2. If your package comes with backing paper as mine did, you can handle that, and use it to apply the gold leaf to the adhesive (as you can see in the photos)
3.  cut out the shapes you desire and (with the backing paper) apply the shapes to the adhesive.  Then remove backing paper.
4. You can also by gold leaf in flakes.  This is convenient, but gives you a little less control over shapes and neatness.

Resources: I am working with the Speedball Mona Lisa Gold Leaf with adhesive pen.  Also, I spent a while on you tube, doing my due diligence, watching an endless stream of videos, researching gold leaf techniques.

You can fully expect to see many more examples of gold leaf popping up in my work over the next few weeks (and probably for the rest of my life!)  Once you start, it’s quite hard to stop…