Gilding Walnuts and Rose Leaves

Have been getting some interesting enquiries since doing Kirstie's Home Made Home. Someone wanting to gild walnuts (lovely idea) and also rose leaves.

Here's a great tip I learnt from my very creative grandmother who has a beautiful rose garden. She decorates her cakes with chocolate rose leaves. She dips leaves in chocolate and then carefully peels the leaves away. She taught me how to do it when I was a child and I loved it. If you use edible gold and press the gold gently into the chocolate it looks wonderful. You can use gelatine on a brush as a glue for the gold, or if you're very nimble fingered you can press the gold into the chocolate when it's still soft.

Faux Lapis

This is faux lapis. I love doing effects like this. I hate doing walls in faux finishes, because it's incredibly boring to do it for hours and hours and get a stiff neck, but I really enjoy doing it on furniture. The little flashes of colour are specks of gold. You drop them into the drying varnish and they look gorgeous.

Christmas Drinks

Here's a taster of what you can do with gold for Christmas. Edible gold in champagne is so much fun! And as gold is known for it's medicinal properties you don't have to feel guilty having an extra glass ;-)

Gilding Glass with Kirstie Allsopp

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kirsties-homemade-home/4od#3135743

Here I am with the lovely Kirstie Allsopp teaching her reverse painting and verre eglomise. She did a fine job. As you can see from her panel, the easiest kinds of designs to copy are bold and fluid. Bright colours look incredible with the gold backing. Silver leaf is also wonderful to work with. Colours like prussian blue and vermilion really complement silver and white gold.

Verre Eglomise Classes (Glass Gilding Classes)

Perhaps verre eglomise is such a well kept secret because it's virtually impossible to take a good picture of it. In reality, this little leaf panel shimmers beautifully, especially in candlelight.

Tomorrow (the 9th) I'll be using this design to teach Kirstie Allsopp on Kirstie's Home Made Home how to gild glass. If you'd like to learn how to do it contact me for details of classes. Gold Leaf Supplies (click on my picture to go to their website) have a fantastic glass gilding kit that I'll be using with students this year.

Or if you'd like to learn how to gild fruit and all sorts of other things, have a look at my "Christmas Table" classes that I'm running in November and December.

The Christmas Table

This is a Verre Eglomise coaster. Gilded coasters are the perfect way to show off crystal on a Christmas table. It's relatively easy to copy seasonal designs onto glass with a technique called reverse painting that I teach on my courses. Or you could create something unique like this simple design of mine.

The Christmas Table

In November and December I teach a class called The Christmas Table. Spend an afternoon learning how to gild flowers, cover fruit in edible gold leaf, decorate candles with flakes of silver and make jewel like verre eglomise coasters. Or alternatively, you could sip a glass of champagne sprinkled with edible gold while I do all the hard work decorating your table for you.

Contact me at londongilding@gmail.com for all prices.

Glass Gilding Kits

Gold Leaf Supplies have this fantastic starter kit for glass gilding, everything you need to begin making beautiful verre eglomise. Cick on my profile picture to go to their website. Top tip, a pair of scissors and eyebrow tweezers are a great help when gilding. Keeping the book of gold open is quite difficult, so to make it easier, cut away the binding and then use the tweezers to lift off each piece of paper between the gold. It means that the leaf stays flat and protected while you work.

24 Carat Gold Ipads

24 carat gold ipads. Love them.

Gilded Buckles

This is my studio floor today, it's part of an order for gilded buckles. There are hundreds of them (334 to be precise) and it looks as if any minute a miniture Greek army will come marching in and claim them.