Metal stamping kit

The other day at the shops I happened to see how they do the monograming at Kiki K and noticed they use the heat transfer foil I used a while back to make illuminated verses framed using my laster printer (instead of Heidi swapp). They also charge $10 for only 3 letters. So when I saw this metal stamping kit on temu for $13 I thought I would give it a go. This arrived a week or so ago and only found some time to play with it today. I kind of went to town with monogramming testing out the different surfaces.

To monogram with the gold foil I simply heated the metal stamp using the candle. Found that it worked best with at least 60seconds of heat.

I started with the hard leather cable strap (tan brown bottom right). It was best to emboss first (no foil) had to use a mallet to imprint it. Then follow with the heat transfer paper.

I then embossed the other tan leather strap.

I really just wanted to monogram my new Londo purple A6 leather Plein air kit (left) but had received the sample leather as part of it (also the cable straps came free). So next I embossed and then used the heat transfer foil. I also experimented with using the T mirror images to look like a cross. The leather was more soft than the tan so it picked up more of the gold from sides and so the result was less defined.

It wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for but it has a nice grungy look and let’s face it anything good looks nice.

Next was the stack on the right going bottom up the nude by nature with faux leather was soft and also not the best result but still ok.

The black sea white with faux leather cover worked the best with little pressure required. This inspired me to also emboss the spine with the dates and think I’ll do this for all my books going forward as the labels I use even with sticky tape often fall off.

The Kraft paper hahnemuhle whilst was stamped it didn’t pick up as much of the gold but might need more pressure next time and potentially could open the book face down and put a hard surface under it. Also could use a mallet to stamp.

Lastly the Stillman and Birn alpha (blue) book was the best but I need to work on my placement of letters. I tried to use sticky tape to keep the hold foil in place but it’s hard to see where the other letters are. I need to line up the bottom of the letters better.

Overall I’m quite happy with the kit and my little experiment even though it wasn’t as polished as the Kiki K would have been, it was nice to know I can do this for my books anytime. Also from this exercise I’ve already got my money back with 8 items for the price of one or so.