Aluminum Foil Impressions Background Technique

Aluminum foil can be used for all sorts of things. My son likes to make hats, in fact. And who doesn't have some aluminum foil around?

And in this tutorial, we make a unique background.

In this tutorial, I use spray inks to color the foil, but any thinned out paint would work.

I also used a spray ink made for tie-dye. But I use it for all sorts of other projects.

To start, you apply a thick coat of gel medium to your card stock.

This is what makes it able to leave an impression.

Then you place a piece of aluminum foil over the gelled card stock.

Pat it down gently. Make sure you leave a little room between the paper and foil.

Now, you can take a fork or comb or whatever mark-making thing you have, and run it over the foil, leaving an impression.

Get your spray inks or thinned paint and spray or generously paint all over the foil.

As it's drying, you can tilt it a few times to spread the puddles of ink.

Here's one I did using green and yellow inks

Can you see how the ink gets into the marks left with our tools? That's the cool part.

IMPORTANT STEP: before you touch your dried background, spray it with some type of sealer. Otherwise, the ink will just wipe off.

And here they are, finished:

And if you wanted to do this in an art journal, you could try just covering part of the page with foil for an eclectic look.

I used my background to make an artist trading card: