Painted foil backgrounds
July 24, 2007 by Cyndi Lavin
Filed under Arts & Crafts
Plain old aluminum foil makes a wonderful background for collage, and also can be a nice accent to add to a larger piece, especially when the foil is painted. There are only a couple of tricks to making paint work with foil, and as long as those points are observed, your experiments with these techniques can go on and on and on!
Hi Cyndi. These are pretty cool looking, but I have a question! There seems to be a lot of texture in the images. Is this all down to the color, or is the foil textured before you add paint?
Hey Derek! It’s mostly the layering of color that makes it look highly textures (plus, of course, the stuff I added like cheesecloth…but I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to). The foil is wrapped around the cardstock pretty smoothly. It also looks good to crinkle the foil first, smooth it out, and then paint it, but that’s not what I did this time.
I am really loving this look, and think I will use this technique quite a bit.
Thanks
hey there! thanks for visiting my blog:) I just love your blog, wish I had found it earlier!! have a great day
Trish
Thanks Trish! I enjoyed my visit to your blog very much
Hy Cyndi,
I discovered your post late. I hope you are still available to reply. How did you apply/adhere the foil to the backing (in your case, cardboard but I am sure it could be applied to thin MDF or other flat surfaces)? With a heavy crinkling effect, would you reccomend a thick underlayer of adhesive paste so that will not only adhere the foil but act as a filler to add stability to the ridges? If so, any specific products you recommend?
Thank you.
Hi Hector! I used a thin acrylic medium to adhere the foil to the substrate. I’m sure MDF would work great…why don’t you try using wood glue? It’s got that heavier consistency and might fill your ridges like you mention. I didn’t worry about filling the crinkles, but I can see why you might want to, depending upon what you’re going to use the background for. If people are going to be touching it, I think you’re onto a good idea here.
Mostly I use Golden’s brand acrylic mediums, but I’m kind of an adhesive junky and have to try them all. Wood glue rocks too!