Foiling/Embossing Induction

Today, I got properly inducted into the colleges foiling facilities and learnt a lot about how I can adapt this technique into my experimentation for the publication. Mike ran us through how you can foil and flock onto various materials for our publications such as paper, fabrics and book rim which I are all options that could adapt into my project.

From the induction, we learnt that the process can be problematic on just paper, especially when pressing ontop of already printed inks or acrylics. The heat causes the inks to melt and become slightly sticky again causing the foil to stick to areas outside of the glued area, leaving a textured ring around the areas where it has dried out of place.

So to begin you prepare a textiles screen with your stencil of what you want foiled ready.

You then buy texi flock glue which is mixed with water to thin it out abit, and then pulled through onto the material you want foiled/flocked.
- When doing it on fabric, you pin it down and pull the glue through back and forth 4 times.
- Whereas with paper it only needs to be pulled through once or twice.

Let the glue dry and prepare the heat press machine - temperatures and times for various materials and processes are labelled next to the station 

Put the foil over the glued area, texture facing upwards (with flocking put it face down to rip off) and place in the heat press with newsprint on either side for protection.

Pull the black handle out and then down to secure the clamp and start the process

Let it cool and simply pull it back to reveal the foiled/flocked area.
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On Book rim, you cannot flock very well*

Also you can carry out the process using an iron however consider how an iron typically on heats to around 150degrees, whereas the heat press goes up to 170.

Worked best on the fabric in the induction, however with practise and experimentation it can become more refined on paper/book rim.

Embossing

Can either use the type for letterpress they have in the print room (can do it on the various presses around the print room), or if I want to try and combine the foiling or general print within an embossed area it will need to be perfectly aligned and kerned the exact same as the letterpress.. This can be very problematic and time consuming to get right.

Instead can digital print a custom typeface, and then screen print as usual for the foiling process, but then instead of trying to match with the letterpress pieces I could laser cut the exact same type onto mountboard and have my own exact letter pieces evenly kerned to press with. *Would do the foiling first if I try this

Another option is simply letter-pressing with a metallic based ink to achieve a similar embossed effect aswell as a shiny inner print.