Tips And Techniques

Using a Leaf Pen

July, 8th 2009

Gold and silver leafing pens are a very useful (and economical) way of adding a touch of luxury to your stationery. They have a chiselled end so can produce thick and thin lines and are great for calligraphy, edging and lots more.

Here are a few ideas:

Calligraphy

If you have great handwriting you can use the pens free-hand to write your place settings. If you are like me and need to cheat a little, try printing onto your card first and tracing over it. Use a font colour which is just visible on the card and which won't show if you miss a little bit. Here we have used the gold pen on dark brown card.

Edging

Use the pen to highlight the edges of torn paper. In this example, we used a ruler to tear squares from cream stardream paper. We then edged them with the gold pen, attached them to cream pearl card and added a heart embellishment in each square.

Borders

You can create borders simply by drawing straight lines using a ruler as a guide. In this example, we have drawn a border around a rectangle of handmade paper with a calla lily attached.