The Minc Reactive Paint and Toner Pen!

Hello!

Another post at last! Sorry it’s been a long time. Have you missed me? I *think* I actually have a post to go live every day this week (Monday – Friday) so that will be exciting, huh?! One of them will be a giveaway post!

I have been busy since my last post, with a family holiday to Florida (which you already know about if you follow me on Instagram), then getting back into the school runs, my Parent Teacher Association Chairwoman post, running Rainbows, back to work at the school library, and I’ve had a steady stream of Etsy orders (thank you if any were from you!). So it’s no wonder I’ve struggled to fit in time for blog posts!

Today I’m sharing some tests I conducted with the Heidi Swapp Minc Reactive Paint and Toner Pen…

First I sorted out the items I wanted to try painting on – a mix of patterned and plain paper, a cork sticker, various chipboard embellishments, and some wood veneer shapes. I also grabbed a few Happy Scatter stencils to use on some of them:

I squeezed some paint out onto a craft mat, and used a sponge dauber for some and a paintbrush for others. The sponge dauber gave a bubbly effect when applying it but this evened-out as it dried so it didn’t effect the final foiling:

Make sure you clean the craft mat, sponge dauber, paintbrush, and stencils (or whatever you are using with the paint) straight away after using, as it’s quite a gluey, sticky paint – I wouldn’t want it to dry on my tools!

I used the stencils on a few and painted freehand on the rest. I made sure the paint layer was even, not patchy – this was easy to achieve as the paint itself is thick and doesn’t spread out too much. I did have to hold some of the pieces up at angles to the light, so that I could check there were not any patchy areas, if there were I painted them again. Then I left it all to dry overnight, as the paint has to be super dry before you try foiling it:

They mostly foiled very nicely, but I did hit a few unexpected snags which you can avoid! I didn’t think about the plastic or adhesive on the back of the stickers and chipboards and how that would melt in the Minc. Here’s where the flower chipboard backing melted and stuck to the carrier sheet:

I managed to scrape it all off after it had cooled, but you might want to remove the backing off chipboards where possible! Or perhaps put a sheet of paper in the carrier sheet under the chipboard or sticker, so if it melts it sticks to the paper instead of your carrier sheet.

Another problem I had was with these wood veneer hearts. They were the thickest item I was trying to put through, at 3mm deep – the other items were 1.5mm deep at most. And these hearts did not fit through the Minc. I gave it a go because I knew I could hit the reverse button if they got stuck. They got close enough to be warmed up a bit, so the foil melted on them a little, but then I had to reverse it as they wouldn’t actually go in:

I tried to think of other ways to melt the foil on, so I tried putting them in a carrier sheet and using a heat tool to warm it, but this crumpled my carrier sheet:

And there wasn’t much more foil stuck on than before:

I did managed to flatten my carrier sheet out a bit by passing it through the Minc a couple of times, but it’s still a bit wobbly!

Finally I tried adding more paint, letting it dry again, and adding foil just using a heat tool – with a metal paper piercer to help me hold the foil in place while I heated it up. This was the most successful coverage-wise, but it did go bubbly – I’m not sure if the paint wasn’t quite dry, or if it was because of all the layers, or if it was the heat tool that caused the bubbling! Never mind, I shall keep experimenting:

Here’s all the items that I used the Minc Reactive Paint on, including a scrap of fabric. The fabric worked fine but I should have put a sheet of paper under that in the carrier sheet too, as some of the paint melted through the fabric fibres! I was impressed with how these all turned out though:

Especially the gold ones! I love the gold pineapple using my Happy Scatter Pineapple Mini Stencil:

Now, on the other hand, the Toner Pen was shockingly bad. Here’s all the items I drew with the pen:

I made sure I drew slowly, and I used a mix of shiny and matt papers – the ‘make it happen’ quote was on super glossy paper. The ink coverage looked great on them all. But they foiled terribly:

The foil worked in some places so I guess it would be okay for a grungy foiled look, if such a thing exists?! But it wasn’t the look I was going for:

I don’t think I shall be using the Minc Toner Pen again. I shall definitely be using the paint again though, I couldn’t wait to use some of my painted items so I pulled out a photo and put this page together:

The foiled items are a great way to make the page extra special and shiny:

I’m going to see what else I can paint and foil now…

I hope you are all having a great Monday!

Jennifer x