DIY holiday ornaments

Foiling on Acrylic with Cricut and WRMK Foil Quill

Hi Everyone!

This week I’m going to make the same acrylic ornaments with foil on my Cricut Maker. It’s not quite as easy as my Portrait 3, but it is doable if you have Cricut instead of a Silhouette machine. I will be using my WRMK Foil Quill, the Cricut Foil Transfer tool does NOT work on acrylic.

Supplies:

(Links below may be affiliate links)

3 inch acrylic disc, 2mm thick

SVG Draw file (you can get my snowflake here)

WRMK Foil quill (medium tip) with C adapter

Gold heat reactive foil or other foil color of your choice

Cricut machine (I will be using my Maker)

Strong Grip Cutting Mat (the purple one)

Cricut pen (any color)

Chipboard template

Blue Painter’s tape or Washi Tape

9-12 inch length ribbon or twine for finished ornament

Let’s get started!

I exported my snowflake design that I made a few weeks ago from Silhouette Studio as an SVG so I can upload it into Cricut Design space.

Since I will be using my WRMK Foil Quill and it works as a pen in clamp A, I will be using the Cricut App on my iPad Pro. For some reason the app seems to handle detailed draw files better than the desktop version. I almost always get the “Wow that’s a big project!” yellow bar when I try to use one of my draw files in the desktop version.

After uploading my SVG into Design Space, I change my lines from “Cut” to “Draw.” I’m going to make my snowflake and numbers gold metallic glitter, I’m going to make the circle outline silver glitter. The colors you pick don’t really matter, they just need to be 2 different colors.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I “attach” the gold and silver lines and click on the Make It button in the upper right corner.

As usual, Cricut defaults to placing my artwork in the upper left corner, but I’m going to move it so it’s further down and closer to the middle of my mat. This will help when I need to place the template and foil later.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut
Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

It’s also a good idea to plug in your foil quill tip while you’re setting up the template on your mat, so it has plenty of time to heat up. I’ve got mine plugged into a small battery pack.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

If you plan on making multiples of these all at once, using a template is a good idea. I will be using the same chipboard template from my previous posts to help keep my acrylic disc in place on my cutting mat. So before I start foiling the acrylic discs, I need to align my template on my mat.

To get my template aligned, I’m going to start with a piece of plain paper that’s a little bit smaller than my overall chipboard template. I place it approximately where the artwork is located on my screen.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I’m going to use just the plain black fine tip Cricut pen that cam with my machine. You can you any pen color that you wish, this is just to get the template aligned.

I select “Chipboard 2mm” for my material since this is the closest material thickness to my 2mm acrylic.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I press send and it prompts me to load the Silver pen, which is the circle outline. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to which pen color Design Space selects first. I have made this same project previously and it wanted the gold pen first.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I load my mat and press the Go button on my machine. Once it’s finished with the silver pen, it prompts me for the gold pen. My mat is still halfway in the machine (this will be important later when you need to place the foil).

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Since I’m just using the black pen, I press the go button and the machine draws the snowflake portion. Once it’s done, DO NOT unload your mat from the machine!!!

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Now it’s time to actually place the chipboard template on you mat. Take your template and place it on top of the plain piece of paper, lining up the circle cut out with the circle drawn on the plain piece of paper. Place a piece of tape along the top edge of the template to make a hinge.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Carefully lift up the template and remove the the plain paper from your mat.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Place the template back down on your mat and tape down the other 3 sides. Now you can place the acrylic disc inside the cut out in the template. Don’t forget to remove the plastic film from the side of the acrylic that you will be foiling!!

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Now, I’m going to go ahead and tape my foil down over the acrylic since my machine wants to make the circle outline first and once it’s done with the circle, my mat will be stuck in the middle of my machine and I won’t be able to tape my foil down at that point. I’m not going to load my foil quill into clamp A just yet since I don’t want the circle to be foiled..

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I press the “Go” button on my machine and let the empty carriage go through the motions of drawing the circle. My machine stops with the mat still in the middle of the machine and prompts me to load the gold pen. This is why I placed the foil on my mat earlier.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I place my foil quill in clamp A. Be careful not to touch the little metal tip, it’s hot!

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

I press “Go” on my machine again and the foil quill draws the snowflake and the date. Once it’s finished, a little box will pop up in Design Space saying the action is complete, you can click OK.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

If you want to make another ornament, DO NOT unload your mat and do not exit Design Space. Just leave this screen showing.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Remove the Foil Quill from clamp A and carefully remove the tape from the foil and remove the acrylic disc from the template. You can also remove the protective film from the back of the acrylic disc.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Now you can place a new acrylic disc in the template, cover it with the foil. Press the “Go” button on the machine and it will start with the circle shape again.

A couple of tips:

  1. Remove the foil quill from Clamp A when your machine wants to draw the circle portion of the artwork.

  2. Don’t unload your mat from the machine! Otherwise you will need to do the whole template alignment again.

  3. You can use a piece of tape to carefully clean up the edges of the foil.

Foiling on acrylic with Cricut
Foiling on acrylic with Cricut
Foiling on acrylic with Cricut

Foil Quill on Acrylic with the Portrait 3

Hi Everyone!

It’s hard to believe it’s already November! This month I’m going to be focusing on projects for the holidays. Today’s project will be acrylic ornaments decorated by using the WRMK foil quill. Let’s get started!

Supplies:

(Links below may be affiliate links)

Silhouette Portrait 3

Standard Grip Mat

Chipboard with 3” circle cutout (optional)

3 inch round 2mm thick acrylic ornament blanks

Medium Tip Foil Quill

Gold Foil heat reactive foil or any foil color of your choice

9-12 inch length of ribbon or twine


Project:

I created a 3 inch circle in Silhouette Studio and I centered one of the snowflakes from my Snowflake Single Line SVGs

I added 2021 at the bottom using the font La Bohemienne.

Artwork set up in Silhouette Studio

I am going to send this to my machine by line color. Everything in Yellow will foiled.

My acrylic blanks are already cut into 3 inch circles, so I won’t need to actually cut them.

I already had a piece of chip board with a 3 inch circle cut out so I will be using that to help align my acrylic pieces on the cutting mat. I have it placed pretty far down on my mat so I can easily remove the foil and the ornament without removing the mat from the machine. (I will create a post later showing you how to make a chip board pattern and how to realign it to use it if over and over again.)

Mat prep for foil quill on acrylic

Plug in your Medium Foil Quill tip so it has time to heat up. I’m using the D adapter that came with the foil quill.

Medium tip foil quill using D adapter

Remove only one side of the clear plastic coating from the acrylic blank - this is the side you will have face up to foil on.

Remove plastic coating from acrylic blank

Place the acrylic blank inside the circle in the chipboard with the side that still has the plastic coating is face down against the mat.

Acrylic blank inside chipboard template

Tape down your foil over the acrylic round, make sure it’s nice and tight. My foil piece is about 4 inches x 4 inches

Tape foil over acrylic blank

In Silhouette Studio, I have just the Yellow line selected. For my material I chose Craft Foam since that’s a thicker material. My Action is Sketch, Tool is Pen, Force of 5, speed 2.

machine settings for foil on acrylic

I load my mat and press send.

After the machine is done, if you plan to make multiples, DO NOT unload the mat.

Carefully remove the foil and ornament from the mat, without taking the mat out of the machine.

I put a piece of metallic twine through the top hole and now you have pretty ornament to give as a gift or use it to jazz up your gift wrapping!

Finished ornament with gold foil on acrylic

The metallic foil sticks really well to the acrylic, the heat from the foil quill kind of melts it into the ornament. It’s so pretty, I can’t wait to try this out with different artwork on different foil colors!

Detail of gold foil on acrylic
Finished ornament gold foil on clear acrylic