Crafting Hack - Foiling using a laser printer and a laminator

 This week saw my silver wedding anniversary.  We marked it quietly at home sheltering as much as possible from this unprecedented year.  We also made cards for each other rather than buy them.  Not exactly fair as my husband is about as practical as a blind man wearing boxing gloves but he did his best and found a lovely cat image which he stuck on my card.  Meanwhile I used the occasion to try a hack I noticed on the internet some time back and was curious to see if it worked.  

One of the advantages of the schools being shutdown earlier in the year was that I was pushed to (finally) get a new laser printer after our old one died after about a decade.  Laser printers (and photocopiers) use ink that is a powder that it set by heat rather than liquid ink like an ink jet and this is exactly what you need for this technique.

1) produce your image or sentiment that you want to foil and print in black and white only (the card you print on may be coloured but the image should be black ink only)

2)Lay the heat reactive foil over the top of the image  (foil side up) and then top with a sheet of paper to protect the foil

3)Put through the laminator

It really was that simple.  

I used the Minc silver reactive foil from Amazon UK (the price has gone up a little since I bought mine - I paid about £5.50)

Other colours are available and since the roll is 5 feet long I should get lots of use.  Thermoweb is another brand that you could also use which has even more colours, but not as long.