A Designer At Home

Designing Beautiful Spaces. Inspiring Authentic Living. Spreading Good Vibes.

Gold Leaf Embellished Trinket Tray Gifts

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Welcome! You are in for a treat today! You’ve either stumbled here because of one of the other fabulous bloggers sharing handmade gifts today, or not. Which means you’re either enjoying loads of great handmade gift tutorials, or you’re about to be! My handmade gift idea is these darling little cutomizable gold leaf embellished trinket plates.

DIY Gold Leaf Accented Trinket Trays on ForMyLoveOf.net

What You’ll Need:

Square white plates, Painter’s Tape, Vinyl Letters and Numbers, Permanenet Marker, Adhesive, Gold Leaf, and Sealer

 

The Process:

playing around with vinyl letters painters tape and metallic markers

A lot of this process involves playing around with your options until you like how it’s turning out. I had a lot of fun creating my plates’ designs, but I changed my mind a lot to get to what they’re at now.

The Numbers Plate is actually the house number for one of my giftees. Use vinyl numbers and dots (the period stickers) and stick them straight to the plate. Following the direction for the adhesive, paint on a thin layer and wait until the adhesive is clear and tacky. Then, just lie the gold leaf onto the adhesive and use a brush to press it all down. Then use a stiff dry brush to flake off all the excess. Coat the plate with the sealer and set aside to dry.

lying gold leaf over vinyl numbers

The Marker Marks and Gold Triangle plate was the only success out of my permanent marker attempts. I tried out metallic permanent markers and just wasn’t wowed enough with the effect. For the record: I used a generic permanent marker from the dollar store and it didn’t specify whether or not it was oil based. Just make little tick marks in pairs in alternating directions over half the plate. Place the plate in a cold oven, then set the temperature to 400 degrees fahrenheit. Bake for 30 minutes.

baking permanent marker

Once the plate is cooled (I let mine cool in the oven overnight), you can take it to your work surface and tape out a triangle. Follow the same directions for using the gold leaf keeping within the triangle. It helps to really run the brush along the edges of the tape to ensure a clean line when pulling the tape back.

applying gold leaf adhesive

The Gold Square plate is easy. Tape out a square shape and follow the directions for the gold leaf adhesive and sealer process.

The Gold Stripes plate is almost just as easy. Tape out a square and then tape across the square twice. Follow the directions for the gold leaf and sealer process and BAM!

gold leaf accented trinket trays

The plates make adorable additions to a watch or bracelet gift. Or on their own. Trinket trays are perfect for placing keys, accessories, and wallets into. Although the sealer holds everything down pretty good, it is not food safe. If you’d like to replicate the process for food items, you would need to pick up a sealant that is food safe.

gold leaf trinket trays customized

I wrapped a few atop some christmas gifts I’d already picked up. I get pretty stoked for Christmas and start my shopping in the summer. I wrapped the gifts in fun red glitter wrapping paper and tied everything together with the natural cotton twine. The trinket trays look adorbs as gift toppers!

gold leaf trinket trays atop wrapped gifts

Now, here’s the great part! 14 more Handmade gift tutorials! Before you go, please leave a comment, follow For My Love Of on social media, and share! There are too many good ideas here to keep them to ourselves! (links below are in the order they’re pictured 😀 )

A Handmade Christmas Series

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • CorinnaAshley says

      I still kindof hate working with gold leaf (it’s super messy!). But the result is SO pretty, I’m working on finding fun ways to finish up the book I’d bought. I’m sure you’ll find it’s worth it!

  4. Trisha D. says

    Oh my goodness Corinna, these are absolutely perfect! I want some for my house STAT!! Thank you for the tutorial, I’m off to go pin it EVERYWHERE (because its nothing short of awesome) and slap it in a couple secret boards so I never forget!!

    Thanks for linking up to Outside [the Box], I love seeing your projects- keep ’em coming every Tuesday!!

  5. Julie says

    Oooo, I love how the gold leaf came out, it’s such a classy soft gold colour. I do love a bit of gold here and there and a place to pop your special bits and pieces is just good sense. Lovely.

    • CorinnaAshley says

      Brushing it with a stiff bristled brush is what gave it that soft focus look (I’m sure I forgot to mention that). Lots of brushing smoothed it out and I love the effect it gave.
      Thanks so much for commenting!

  8. Barb says

    Fantastic idea! Love those little square plates. I bet a series of these done with ‘2015’ would rock a New Year’s party. Thanks for inspiring.

  11. Ida says

    WOW! I love these. These are such a perfect gift. I have little trinket trays all over the house. They are super useful!
    Thanks for linking up on Merry Mondays!

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