How to Fake Leather Gilding with Heat Transfer Vinyl

In this short video I'm going to show you how to use heat press material to create the illusion of gilded leather. Now this video also presupposes that you have access to some sort of vinyl cutting machine like a Silhouette Cameo or a Cricut cutter. The material I'm using here is gold vinyl frog heat transfer material. I've applied the vinyl frog material to leather and Tolex many times and I'm very impressed with the amount of detail you can get. It weeds more easily than most vinyls I've ever cut and it adheres to the surface much better. Unlike vinyl though heat transfer is cut from the opposite side so any non-symmetrical shape will need to be cut in reverse. All you'll need to apply the graphic to the leather is a normal dry iron and a careful touch. With my super cheap iron I use a medium high or wool setting. For the first demonstration I glued some scrap leather to a piece of plywood but this will also work on a piece of loose leather as well and I'll show that later. With the graphic facing up and the heat transfer material on the lower side I tape it to the leather so it doesn't slide around. I keep the iron moving at all times and using firm pressure I move it over the surface of the graphic. You don't want to move the iron too fast while you do this. If you do you'll risk distorting the graphic. After about a minute using the iron I was ready to see if this adhered properly. Very carefully peel away the outer coating of the heat transfer material. If the graphic starts to come up with the outer film then you didn't press hard enough or have a hot enough iron or iron long enough. If the heat transfer properly adhered to the leather you'll barely even be able to feel it on the surface. Properly applied the grain of the leather will even show through. If the transfer material is not properly applied resist the urge to do this. Without that plastic film between the iron and the heat transfer material it will melt very quickly. This will cause the image to distort and it will be about impossible to fix. Here you can see on the E and the R how they started to distort with the iron. If you do need to correct any adhesion problems use the plastic film again and don't move the iron around nearly as fast as I am here. Even putting the film back over the graphic the more you do this the more distorted it will get so try to get it right the first time. The process for putting the graphic down on a piece of leather that is not attached to a substrate is exactly the same. The heat press material actually goes on to a loose piece of leather like this even better than it does when the leather is attached to something rigid. As you can see the heat press material is flexible and it will even stretch to a degree. So that is how to fake gilding of leather with a vinyl cutter and an iron. I hope this short video was useful.