How to gild 24ct Gold Leaf onto a 3D Object

This is an extreme close up of my gold gilding work on my 'Hand of Faith' gold nugget.

Working with gold leaf requires a lot of patience. Here are my preferences and tips on how I personally gild gold leaf.

You’ll need:

- Brand new cotton gloves (gold leaf sticks to skin)

- 4 Brushes

- Glue

- Gold Leaf

1. Begin in a breeze free, motionless room. Prior to gilding, thoroughly clean the object to clear any imperfections and dust. You will need to keep in mind that the texture and condition of the object will be reflected in the final gilding. This may require sanding off brush strokes and unwanted textures etc.

2. Coat the object with a thin coat

of Size (or glue for the purpose, usually a German top quality). Be careful not to shake the bottle as bubbles leave marks. Wait 20-40 minutes for it to dry before commencing. Ensure that you blend in your brush strokes early before they dry otherwise they will be seen through the gilding.

3. Put on your cotton gloves. Lift sheets of Gold leaf with one or two clean brushes (soft –normal sable.) I use brushes that won’t form a good point from painting use - Don't use your best brush for this. Position over the area that you would like to gild and gently lower the gold leaf into place. Then, use one of your brushes to softly burnish the gold onto the surface. Remove the leftovers and place them back on some greaseproof backing paper for further use.

4. Keep repeating Step 3 until your object is totally gilded. Gold leaf will stretch unlike Dutch leaf which is thicker and stronger. In fact easier to lay. Placed Dutch leaf will take only to the sized parts which means it seamlessly butts together. Whereas Gold leaf (24ct) will not. It will lay over already gilded areas and meld together when softly burnished with a soft brush.

Things to consider:

*Improper or careless gilding can waste a lot of gold. But if one is careful to tear sheets into the required sized pieces using two soft sable brushes by pulling the leaf at angles against each other and are careful in their placement to slightly overlap the last placed gold, wastage can be avoided.

* It is not possible to lay a sheet of leaf that will reach the bottom of crevasses on an object with irregularities such as a nugget before it gets caught on the sized raised areas. So the method above is the way to achieve total coverage on a convoluted object.

Golf leaf gilding is relatively easy once you have mastered the basics and had some experience using it.

Experiment before tackling your objet d’art.