Mad about MINC

Hiya scrappers: Niki here. Should I buy the Minc machine, or is it another gadget that I really don’t need? I wrestled with this question for about 6 weeks and concluded that I should definitely buy the Minc machine! I have a love for all things glittery and shiny so a machine that allows me to add gold foil (and many other colours) to things really appealed to me. In particular, I own a laser printer, which, in my mind anyway, gave me extra justification for buying the Minc as this means I can print my own designs to foil – the possibilities are endless!

Even the box is pretty! And so is the machine itself so it is a beautiful addition to any craft room. The machine comes with one 12×12 transfer folder, one piece of 6×12″ gold foil, 3 tags ready to be foiled, and an instruction booklet. The machine is really very simple to use – you put your item to be foiled inside the transfer folder, place a piece of foil over the black areas and run it through the machine – it has rollers so you simply feed the transfer folder into the slot and it rolls it through for you. The machine has a number of heat settings which are easily slected simply by pressing one button – there’s also an on/off button at the back, and another button to reverse the direction of the rollers. It couldn’t be easier to use – thankfully!

For my first attempt at foiling, I used the supplies that came in the box – the tags and the 6×12 piece of gold foil. I wanted to stretch my foil as far as it would go, so instead of cutting a piece the same size as the tags I just cut small pices to go over the black areas on the tags – afterall they are the only places the foil is going to stick to. You can see below how lovely the tags came out once foiled, and how little wastage I have over from the foil I used.

First foil application: a success.

Next, onto printing some designs on my PC onto white A4 lightweight card. I wanted to foil a large title and a few smaller icons too. Again I cut my foil to just cover the parts with black on them:

These came out beautifully – better than expected, they look professionally made, not home made by me! The only problem is that they now need cutting out – they obviously aren’t pre-cut! Now if only i could figure out the print and cut function on my silhouette…I’ll tackle that another day I think.

So now I have a number of beautifully foiled tags, a title and some icons, I figured I’d better make a layout!

The background paper is Crate Paper Craft Market which has a gold glittery corner (glitter and foil on one layout – love it!) and I’ve used some Pebbles Cottage Living paper too, a small amount of Fancy Pants Chevron Gold Foiled paper, one of my foiled tags, a few Crate Paper Chipboard Frames, two Jen Hadfield tags, and two On Trend transparencies. The large title is the one I printed and foiled which I fussy cut out and I added to the phrase using small alphabet stickers. (products linked below)

For my second layout I used Elle’s Studio Cienna Confetti paper as my background, a little more of that Fancy Pants Flutter Chevron Gold Foil paper, another Crate Paper chipboard frame, the other two tags I foiled and the scribble heart I printed and foiled. I embellished using some On Trend Chipboard stickers and a few gold sequins.

The Minc foil applicator is a great machine and I can see so many possibilities with it – I’ll be back next month using the Minc to foil other mediums so make sure you check back for that. Hey Little Magpie are giving an extra 1000 reward points when you purchase this machine which makes it extra good value. I highly recommend it.

See you next month and happy scrapping xx