Monday, February 20, 2012

"Gold Leaf" Fakery

Find any candy or confection wrapped in thin gold foil.
 The wrappers on some candies are gold, thin and pliable making for a great study in gold leaf. Gold Leaf was popular in history--kings, queens and emperors often surrounded themselves with golden objects. Objects were often covered in gold leaf since solid gold objects would have been much too difficult and costly to produce. My little grandson showed me this trick while we were discussing art during the Renaissance Period in History. (He also formed miniatures from the wrappers. More on that at a later post.)

Procedure: First and foremost--unwrap carefully and enjoy the candy!
Place stickers on paper and set aside.*
If there are stickers on the outside of the foil wrapper, paste them on a plain sheet of colored paper. (*Save this paper and put it aside for a fun activity later.) Second, wipe any reside from the side of the foil that touched the candy. This will also help smooth out the wrapper. Third, find a small item you wish to cover with the foil. Lastly, smooth the wrapper, gold side out, over the item and press tightly.
This is how any item can appear to be covered in gold leaf. (Yes, you can use the other side of the wrapper to make an object appear to be made of silver too.) *The sheet that contains the stickers should be put aside and any time you find a sticker, say on a banana skin or on another piece of fruit, put it on this paper with the other stickers. Soon you will find you have a lot of various interesting stickers on the sheet. What to do with this? Look at the next post. . .
Rub off any candy residue.

Find a small object to cover.

Voila! Imitation gold leaf.