Handmade elegance:
HOT FOIL WEDDING STATIONERY
Welcome to the fascinating world of hot foiling, where craftsmanship meets luxury in every gleaming detail. This artisanal technique adds a touch of opulence to your wedding stationery, elevating it to a realm of sophistication that captivates the senses.
Hot foiling involves impressing metallic or pigmented foil onto paper through heat and pressure. The result? A radiant, tactile masterpiece that not only catches the eye but also invites the fingers to trace the intricate designs.
The process behind hot foiled wedding stationery
Once the design for your wedding invitations or on-the-day stationery is finalised, it is send to a manufacturer and turned into a bespoke magnesium die. This etched die finds its place on my hot foil press. The setup is a precise process as I ensure perfect positioning between paper and plate with while preparing the press. As the press lever descends, the custom die meets the paper with a layer of foil in between. The application of pressure and heat causes the foil to sink and adhere, resulting in a beautifully debossed and textured design.
Foiling, a true labour of love and patience, is manual in both press preparation and the actual printing phase, where each card is meticulously printed one by one. For designs featuring multiple colours or a combination of embossing and debossing, the press undergoes setup for each of these processes. Simply put, one press run for each colour or technique.
A short history of hot foiling
Hot foiling boasts a rich history spanning centuries. Initially, it adorned gilded book covers, a mark of distinction reserved for the highest-quality written records, particularly those of royal or religious significance. In its infancy, foil printing was a labour-intensive manual process, involving the hand-beating of gold leaf by skilled craftspeople.
The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg brought on a transformative era, integrating hand-set lettering & custom-engraved dies transitioning the hand hammering process to stamping through a hot press.
Fast forward to the late 1800s-early 1900s and new innovations brought on hot stamping foil much thinner and much more affordable than gold leaf. Today, hot foiling extends beyond gold, embracing metallic, pigment, pearlescent, and holographic foils, offering a spectrum of possibilities for exquisite embellishments.
Smitten with Ink & hot foiling: a love story
As the world stood still during the pandemic, I took the step of investing in a vintage hot foil press. I had long been fascinated not only by the gorgeous textured result hot foiling can create but also by the craftsmanship of it.
Affectionately named Betty the Beast, this hot foil press breathed a new sense of purpose into my work as a wedding stationer. I learned the intricacies of paper, foil types, pressure and temperature – each element individually and their collective dance –, essentially building a whole new skill set. It took a lot of trial and error, and I am still learning with every new project, but soon enough the studio proudly embraced hot foiling as its exclusive printing method.
Until came along an antique letterpress…
Seduced by the beauty of hot foil to elevate your wedding stationery?
Hot foil wedding stationery crafted with intention
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