Hello I’m Annie Sloan, welcome to my studio. So, today I’m going to talk about metal leaf and how to apply it to carved wood furniture.

This is how you’ll buy it from my stockist shops. There’s gold, and gold is actually brass, but we’ve always called it gold because real gold is actually quite small, but this is a brass leaf. They’re two and a half inches by two and a half, and these are five by five. Then there’s copper, that’s real copper, and then silver. It’s not silver it’s actually aluminium. So that’s how you’ll buy them and this is how it comes – that’s what’s inside. This is a book of leaf.

You’ll try to pick it up, each leaf is in between two sheets of tissue paper, but sometimes it can be quite sticky and attach itself to your hands so the best thing is to have a little bit of talcum powder on your hands, just a tiny bit, nothing too big.

Look at that, very very light… that’s five inches by five inches and that’s called loose leaf and that is what we call gold or imitation gold or brass. There’s 20 sheets in there.

So, today I’m going to do this piece, it’s a French-style stool. It’s got one of my fabrics on it, it’s a linen with French Linen and Old White. I think it all works really well.

I’ve painted this with some primer red which is a traditional colour. Everything’s very traditional what I’m doing today and I’m going to use brass loose-leaf on it. Before I do anything I need to apply the glue. So, the glue that you use on here is actually called, this is it here, it’s mine, and it’s called gold size. Size is just an old English word for glue – bit confusing. It’s extraordinary stuff. I’m going to dip it in, you only need a small amount and what’s so amazing is that it goes on, I’m just going to wipe it across, there are several ways you could do it, but this is one way you could do it. Wipe it across, and you’ll see it’s white, and after a while it will go completely clear. When it’s completely clear is when it’s ready. If it’s still a purpley-blue colour or white it’s not ready to be used. So that way I’ve just brushed over the top, the highlights, or you could be a little bit more careful and really go deep in… so you get into all the crevices. I’m doing it with my left hand there. So this bit will only go to the top and those bits will go right into all the bits.

A big tip, once you’ve done that, don’t leave your brush because that will kill your brush, so into the water it goes.

So this is a little bit I did already, I’ve just done the top bit. I’m going to take my leaf and I shall take the little brush. I’ve put a little bit of masking tape there so that it doesn’t go onto the fabric or anywhere. It’s quite robust, although it’s very fine it’s quite robust.

Now it’s sticking on one bit… and I’m just going to dab quite hard. Remember I just brushed it over the top on here. So what it’s going to do, it’s going to leave some of the red showing. I say red, I mean the primer red. This primer red would be the traditional colour – it’s the colour of the earth – Italian earth.

Dab dab dab dab… Now where I haven’t got size, it won’t stick and I did that on purpose to show you that wherever you want the
gold to be, you put the size. I know it seems obvious but sometimes people don’t quite guess that. So if you don’t paint it, you don’t size it, it won’t go gold.

Now you can really brush quite hard… and then I can tear it off. Now I’m just rubbing away until that’s all the places where the gold size was. So that looks pretty good I think. It’s actually a little bit too shiny. So real gold doesn’t have that shine, because this is brass. To get that real good looking gold we’re going to do something which will not only protect it – remember that brass will tarnish so it will stop it tarnishing – it would also protect it from getting scratched and what-have-you, but it will also look really real.

So I’m just going to do that bit, then I’m going to take a little bit of cloth, you could use a brush to apply it with… a normal brush or one of those brushes or, a wax brush. But, because it’s quite delicate I’m going to do it with just a cloth. I’m using clear wax…

I’m gently going over it. A little bit less shiny than it was, but that is actually what real gold looks like.

I’ve done another bit already… also this is the front side, so there’s the whole thing. It does look fantastic doesn’t it. So this bit here I’ve done very solidly, I’ve not missed much of it because I put the gold size everywhere – in all the grooves and all the bits of carving. Whereas this bit I rubbed the size over the top.

If you wanted though, what you might want to use is a little bit of brown wax. I’m going to put some brown wax on there. I’ve already put the clear wax on and now I’m just going to try a little bit of the brown wax. The clear wax underneath will help it smooth itself over so you can sort of age it without it getting too heavy. I think that looks rather lovely… and you can do as little or as much as you like. So perhaps down here I could do a little bit more… and what that’s done also is where all the grooves of the leaf shapes, it goes into those and I think it looks really fabulous. So I’ve just concentrated here on the leaf, but of course I would be doing the whole thing. This is chalk paint at the moment and at the moment it’s got nothing on it, so the whole thing would be waxed.

So there you have it, that’s how you do a piece with my gold leaf. Something traditional and something really rather elegant.