Foil Embossing: tin foil & sharpies art project

A very popular lesson with both my students and parents which yield fantastic results for all kids. 

I've posted about this lesson previously: HERE and HERE.

I teach this to Grades 4 through 6. We use cereal boxes as a base but any cardstock would work as well. 

We also use just regular yarn (any colours, doesn't matter) and white glue.

Cut the yarn and glue down whatever design you like. I just tell kids that the design has to have all enclosed shapes (nothing open). This is a great lesson to teach line and shape. Let dry overnight. 

The cardboard will curl a bit but that's ok. 

Cover the whole image with a thick layer of glue stick and glue on a piece of BARBEQUE ALUMINUM FOIL or HEAVY DUTY FOIL that's about an inch larger on all sides. 

Regular aluminum foil is too thin and could rip. 

Rub it carefully with a piece of felt, starting from the center and working your way out. We use small pieces of felt to carefully emboss all the edges. Take your time with this step- it is the key to a nice crisp design. Then colour with sharpies, leaving the raised yarn part un-coloured (or silver)

Some finished pieces:

 

Foil Embossing: tin foil and Sharpies

This project is one of my most viewed projects on my blog. For good reasons: it's a very popular lesson that's found all over Pinterest. 

You will need: cereal boxes, aluminum foil, yarn, white glue, coloured Sharpies.

I posted about it previously HERE. 

Please see that link for detailed instructions and tips that works for my students. 

Some Grade 4 - 6 finished works

Glue Pictures- faux embossed metal

This is a project I found in an Usborne activity book. It's very simple and needs only a few supplies: white glue in a bottle, a piece of card, and gold and black acrylic paint. 

I've seen this lesson done with glue and then you put aluminium foil on top, but this skips that step and it still looks good- like faux embossed antique metal.

So each student needs a piece of heavy card (we used cut up cereal boxes)and a bottle of white glue 

(FYI: we used Elmers brand glue for this- it is fairly thick and that's good. I think some no-name generic school glues might be too runny and therefore not work. So test your particular brand of glue out before teaching this to a class. Tacky glue would also work brilliantly as it's thicker than regular white glue.)

You can choose a subject matter for the project for more focus, or leave it open-ended. I chose birds.

Draw your design onto the card lightly in pencil. 

Practice in a sketchbook or scrap paper first. Try to fill the page.

 Then, using a glue bottle, slowly and carefully pass over all the pencil lines.

You may have to touch up areas. Just take your time. 

If you make a mistake, just wipe it off and start again.

Let dry flat overnight. 

By the next class, the card will have curved/warped a bit, but that's ok. 

The glue will have also flattened out a bit.

Now it's time to create a faux antique metal effect. Paint the whole picture with gold or bronze or silver metallic acrylic paint. Let dry. 

Once it's dry, get some black acrylic paint ready and a damp paper towel or cloth.

Paint the entire picture with black paint and then, using the damp paper towel, gently rub away the black paint, revealing the gold underneath. This gives sort of an antiquing effect.

   

You can use this technique with lots of age groups, from elementary to Grade 8 as you can see from the results below.

Foil Embossing (Repoussé)

This is a foil embossing project, known as repoussé, that I did with a Grade 11 IB class. 

It requires designing a highly detailed image onto foil and then aging it with ink.

I find that students who enjoy doing linocutting quite enjoy this process as well, as it requires patience to work with a fairly slow process with fine detail.

From Wikipedia:

Repoussé is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal (copper, brass, aluminum, etc) is ornamented or shaped by hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief. Chasing is the opposite technique to repoussé, and the two are used in conjunction to create a finished piece. It is also known as embossing.

I had my students first research the art of repousse and record it in their sketchbook.  Googling words like embossing, foil embossing, metal embossing and repousse will get them the most variety of results.  They also looked at repousee from various cultures and time periods, some good examples being Bronze Greek armour plates, Assyrian, Phonecian and Etruscan art.

Here's a sketchbook page showing this student's research:

So here's how I made my sample in order to show my students the process and steps:

I found an image I wanted to emboss- in this case a matryoshka doll image from a card I had.

Draw the image onto a sheet of regular white paper the same size as your foil.

You can buy embossing foil on a roll, for example here, or in individual sheets.

Place your drawing on top of your foil and tape it down.  Place it all on a stack of newspapers (you need a soft surface) and then lightly outline your entire drawing with a dull pencil or ball point pen. How hard you press depends on the thickness of your paper and foil.  Practice on a scrap sheet first.

Once you have your image transferred, you can start embossing. Make sure you work on a stack of newspapers and use a dull pencil. Press over the lines to make them pop out more.  Try flipping over your design and doing some chasing on the back.

Then, to age it and create more dimension, you paint the foil using India ink (waterproof black ink). We simply painted it on, then wiped away some with a paper towel. The ink will stay in the recesses and make the overall design pop out more.  Experiment until you get the amount you like. 

You can also try this with acrylic paint. Once this is all dry, you can mount these onto colored paper- use rubber cement or hot glue to attach the foil- white glue doesn't seem to work.

Here's a lovely landscape scene a student made. It illustrates an excellent use of a variety of textures and surfaces: tree bark, feathers, cobblestones, roof tiles, etc. She also cut away parts of the foil.

Starting the embossing on a stack of newspapers.

Painting over the design with black ink.

Detail of the texture:

Student reflection in sketchbook:

Here's another student work- she used red ink, instead, to give a bit of a different feeling to the piece.