Tips for Using the WRMK Fine Tip Foil Quill with the Silhouette Portrait 3

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Hi Everyone!

This week I was fulfilling an Etsy order for my snowflake gift tags, I typically make these on my Cricut Maker, but I wanted to try making them on my Silhouette Portrait 3 to see how they turn out.

I make these gift tags using my snowflake single line SVGs, heavy 100lb cardstock, the fine tip WRMK Foil Quill, and WRMK foil in gold for the white cardstock and silver for the black cardstock.

For the Portrait 3 and Cameo 4, the adapter A for the Silhouette machines doesn’t work. So I use the adapter D that came with my foil quill set.

In the Send screen set my Portrait 3 to sketch, Coverstock, Heavy (105-122lb), Force 2, Speed 2.

Initially I started out using an off brand mat with my Portrait 3, they’re a little thicker and stiffer than the Standard Portrait 3 mat.

I load my mat and press Send from the Silhouette software.

Almost immediately my foil starts ripping!!!!

I switch to my Silhouette brand Standard grip mat, it’s thinner and floppier that my off brand mat. I also switch my material to Chipboard, Force 2, Speed 2.

Reload my mat and press Send. This time the foil didn’t rip and the results are beautiful!

So here are my top 6 tips for using the WRMK Fine Tip Foil Quill:

1. Use the D adapter that comes with the Foil Quill set

2. Use the Silhouette brand Standard grip mat

3. Place something like a book or a small box in front of your machine to help keep the mat level while it’s foiling. You want something that is roughly the same thickness as the front of the machine.

4. Select a material that is thicker than the material you are foiling. For example, I was using heavy cardstock (overstock) so I selected chipboard.

5. Select a lower force and speed. The default settings for Chipboard were Force 7, Speed 5. I got the best results with Force 2, Speed 2. Your settings will differ depending on the materials you’re using.

6. Don’t try to foil everything at once. I can typically get 8 gift tags out of one piece of cardstock, but I cut the cardstock down into smaller pieces and foil the smaller pieces instead of one giant piece at once. That way, if something happens while foiling, I’m not wasting an entire piece of cardstock and a big piece of foil.

Foiling with Glue Pens

Hi Everyone!

This week I want to share a little foiling technique that doesn’t require any heat or a cutting mat! I will be using my Silhouette Portrait 3, a glue pen, and some reactive foil (I’ll be using a Minc brand roll of foil that I already have).

I’ve been working on some holiday single line SVG files for gift tags and cards, so I want to test them out using this technique.

I already set up my design to be drawn and cut matless. Each operation will be done according to line color - the blue lines will be drawn with the glue pen, the red lines will be cut. Make sure your design is set up so it is between the rollers on your machine, you don’t want to get glue all over the rollers!

First, I’m going to start with the WRMK Glue Quill. (there are other brands of glue pens you can try, but this is the one I have on hand.) Before loading you pen into the machine, be sure to scribble your pen on a little piece of scrap paper to make sure the glue is flowing. I am using the pen adapter that is made for the Silhouette machines.

I’m going to do the drawing with the glue pen first (the blue lines). I select the heavy coverstock as my material. I’m going to slow down the speed from 5 to a 3, so the glue flows from the pen evenly.

After the machine is done drawing, DO NOT remove the cardstock. I’m going to let the glue dry for a few minutes. It dries pretty quickly and still remains a little tacky, which is exactly what we need to apply the foil.

After the glue is dry, I’m going to cut out my gift tags. I check the box for the red lines & use the Pop out cut.

I cut some small pieces of foil to fit the gift tags. I lay the foil over the gift tag, making sure all of the glue areas are covered by the foil.

I use an old credit card as a scraper, but you can also use a small squeegee. I smooth the foil down in all directions, vertical, horizontal, etc.

Once I see the letters starting to appear, I lift the foil to check my progress. If there are a few spots missing the foil, you can continue to go over it with the squeegee, you can even reposition to foil if needed and continue to squeegee.

Once it’s done, I carefully brush off any foil dust and you have a foiled gift tag! This technique gives the lines kind of a vintage, distressed look.

Foiling with the Silhouette Portrait 3 and WRMK Bevel Quill

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Hi Everyone!

Last week I did some foiling with my Portrait 3 and the WRMK foil quill. This week I wanted to share another technique you can use to foil with your Silhouette Portrait 3 or Cameo.

I found the WRMK Bevel Quill a few weeks ago in the clearance section at my local JoAnn’s, and I’m a sucker for all the little attachments for Cricut and Silhouette machines. Another bonus, I can use this tip in either my Cricut Maker or my Portrait 3.

The bevel tip has a small ball point and is intended to deboss on the “bevel board" materials that are included with the tip , but I wanted to try it with the Spellbinders Glimmer Foil since the foil is also pressure sensitive.

WRMK Bevel Quill

The A adapter included in the kit is intended for the Silhouette machines, but it doesn’t fit the Portrait 3 or Cameo 4.

First, I tried it with the D adapter that also came in the kit, but it doesn’t fit very snugly in the Portrait 3 and pops up out of the tool holder every so slightly when the machine presses down on the tip and there’s no longer any pressure for the tip to apply the foil.

So I grabbed the D adapter from my foil quill set, it’s just a hair wider than the other D adapter. It makes such a big difference, and it stays nice and snug in the tool holder.

D adapter from Foil Quill set

Once again, I used my favorite black cardstock and the Standard grip mat with the regular copper and gold Spellbinder foils. I tried out a few different settings. I ended up getting pretty decent results with my Force between 20-25, Speed 2, and 2 passes.

Copper foil and gold foil on black cardstock

The results are pretty close to what I get with my Cricut Foil Transfer tool and my Maker. The foil doesn’t always stick in some places and it can be a little dusty when you remove the foil sheet after transferring. The WRMK Foil Quill is still my favorite tool for foiling, but this is definitely a good option if you don’t want to be bothered heating up the WRMK Foil Quill.

Cricut Foil Transfer Tool with Silhouette Brand Foil Sheets

Hi Everyone!

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As many of you who work with the Cricut Foil Transfer tool already know, you MUST you pressure sensitive foil. Cricut has their own brand of foil that is designed specifically to work with the foil transfer tool. So far, I haven’t been a huge fan of the Cricut brand foil. It doesn’t stick well to to some card stocks. I have a very tough time using it with my black 100lb cardstock and some of the colors in my 65lb Recollections multipack from Michaels. Also, it will foil perfectly fine in some parts of my design and then the foil doesn’t stick in other parts of the same design. I dunno, maybe I’m being to picky.

So far the only other pressure sensitive foil I have found is the Silhouette brand. I’m going to give the Silhouette foil a try with the Cricut Foil Transfer Tool.

Cricut Foil Transfer Tool - Fine Tip

Unfortunately, the Foil Transfer tool can only be used with the Desktop version of Design Space. I don’t know why that is, but hopefully one day they will make it compatible with the app as well.

I started out with the default pressure on 100lb cardstock. Failure. Like with the scoring stylus in last week’s post, the foil is not sticking to the middle of the letters.

Fine Tip - Default Pressure

Then I tried less pressure on the 100lb cardstock, again, failure.

Fine Tip - Less Pressure

More pressure?? Nope, still a failure. To be honest, if I hadn’t written my settings on the back of the cards, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them, they all look equally terrible.

Fine Tip - More Pressure

Cricut Foil Transfer Tool - Medium Tip

To cut down on wasted materials, I tried just the word hello and a filled in star. I can usually get sort of ok results on this cardstock with the Cricut Brand foil the default pressure setting and the medium tip. If any setting were to work, I would assume that it would have been medium tip, default setting. Still terrible results, not matter if it’s default, less, or more pressure.

Cricut Foil Transfer Tool Medium Tip, Top - Default Pressure, Middle - Less Pressure, Bottom - More Pressure

Cricut Foil Transfer Tool - Bold Tip

I also gave the bold tip a try. I only tried Default and less pressure, they were both absolutely terrible!

Bold Tip, Top - Default Pressure, Bottom - Less Pressure

65lb Cardstock

I made one final attempt on 65lb Recollections cardstock with the medium tip, less pressure. It’s pretty terrible as well.

65lb cardstock with Medium Foil Tip, less pressure

I think the Cricut Foil Transfer tool uses way too much pressure for this foil. Unfortunately, Cricut is really limited with the adjustments for each tool. I can’t make any other adjustments to the pressure other than default, less, and more. So I DO NOT recommend using this Silhouette foil with the Cricut Foil Transfer tool.

So far the only Cricut Tool I’ve had some success with the Silhouette foil is the Deboss Tip. You can check out my previous post about that here.

Foiling with the Cricut Scoring Stylus

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Hi Everyone!

My Cricut Design Space on my laptop has been very finicky this week, I was trying to do a project with the foil transfer tool and my Design Space became really slow and I couldn’t click on anything once I pressed the “Make It” button. Super frustrating!

The Cricut app on my iPad, however, works just fine. The only thing is, I can’t use the foil transfer tool with the app, again super frustrating.

So I decided to try out my Cricut Scoring Stylus with the same Silhouette foil transfer sheets from last week, and here are my results…

Foiling on 100lb Cardstock with the Cricut Stylus

I decided to start out with some black 100lb cardstock. Side note: I don’t really like this cardstock and I’m trying to use it up. So far the only foil I can get consistent results with on the cardstock is the We R Memory Keepers Foil with the Foil Quill. The Cricut foil will stick in some places, but not others and becomes very glittery/ powdery. Certain foil colors work better than others. I think the surface of this cardstock might be too smooth. Anyway, I don’t recommend the brand in my link.

Initially it looked promising before I removed the foil.

But after removing the foil, sadly, no good.

The foil did not stick in the middle of the letters, so they look kind of outlined.

The centers of the letters are still on the foil transfer sheet!

But the filled circles look great! (I still need to clean up the edges with some blue painters tape.)

Next I tried my white 100lb cardstock. I usually get pretty good results with this one with my Cricut Foil and my We R Memory Keepers Foil Quill.

Again, it initially looked promising. But after removing the foil, the same issue with the letters.

But the filled circles still look pretty good, the edges just need to be cleaned up.

Foiling on 65lb Cardstock with Cricut Scoring Stylus

I tried the same test design on 65lb cardstock using the light weight cardstock setting. Again, the filled circles look good, but the words, not so much.

I decided to try just one of the words to see if I could get my settings really nailed down. One thing I hate the most about my Cricut Maker machine is I cannot adjust the settings for the A side carriage - like speed and pressure. I also cannot use the scoring stylus in the B side because it goes underneath the side of the machine when it’s getting fired up for the cut or whatever operation you’re doing.

I tried the word “congrats” as my test. I tried several different types of paper settings. I seemed to have the best luck with the 20lb copy paper setting, but the results are still pretty inconsistent.

I noticed that my scoring stylus can still jiggle around a little bit when it’s in the pen holder. Yes, I made sure it clicked into place and I can’t push it into the holder any further. So I decided to purchase the Chomas adapters for the Maker to see if that made any difference. The scoring stylus fits in the Marker adapter, not the pen adapter.

The hardest part with the the Chomas adapter is getting the scoring stylus at the correct height in the machine. If you only use one craft stick to measure, it’s way too low and you will get a machine error when you try to run your project.

I tried my lightweight cardstock again, the results are better with the Chomas holder than the Cricut Pen holder, still not as perfect as I would like.

I tried the 100lb cardstock again just to see. WAAAAYYYYY better than before, but still some room for improvement.

I found that 3 craft sticks spacing under the scoring stylus works pretty well. I marked my stylus and the marker adapter with blue tape so I know my positions for next time.

3 craft sticks under the tip of the scoring stylus to measure the distance for the Chomas Marker holder

So again, this method works great for small filled shapes, but the lettering still isn’t as good as I would like. I’ll do some more testing with the lettering, but I’m out of this foil at the moment, I’ve got more on order.

I have a feeling it’s something to do with the speed of the machine. I can write a word with the scoring stylus by hand, and get great results. Maybe my Maker is going too fast, but unfortunately I have no control over the speed of the machine.

Written by hand with the scoring stylus and foil transfer sheet.

I’m excited to try this technique with my Portrait 3 machine because I can adjust pretty much all of the settings for that machine. I’ll create a post about that as well, once I try it out.

Foiling with the Cricut Fine Deboss Tip

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Hi Everyone! I’ve been doing some more experimenting with my Fine Deboss Tip for my Cricut Maker. You can even use this tip for foiling!

Please note: The Deboss Tip only works with the Maker machine, it is used with the quick swap housing.

I’m showing this method because I can use the Deboss tip with the Cricut App on my iPad. For some reason the actual Foil Transfer tool is not compatible with the Cricut App.

You need to use a pressure sensitive foil. So I tried out the foil that is used with the Cricut Foil Transfer tool and the Silhouette brand pressure sensitive foil.

Here are my results:

Cricut Brand Foil Transfer

I am testing some single line words and a few filled shapes with the Cricut brand foil and the fine deboss tip on 100lb cardstock. I select the 100lb cardstock from my materials, with default pressure.

Fine Deboss tip with Cricut Gold Foil, default pressure.

The foil transferred in a few places, but far from a success.

Fine Deboss Tip, Cricut Gold Foil

Next I tried 100lb cardstock, more pressure.

I snuck a peek after 1 full pass. It did a little better than the default pressure, but still not great.

Fine Deboss tip, more pressure, one full pass.

I didn’t unload my mat so I could try sending it through my machine one more time. Definitely better than the default pressure, but still not great.

Second pass, more pressure

I made one last attempt with the Cricut foil, this time I tried with the medium 80lb cardstock setting. What a disaster! It tore the foil paper on default and light pressure. I didn’t even attempt more pressure.

Medium 80lb cardstock, default pressure. Tearing the foil.

Medium 80lb cardstock, less pressure. Also tore the foil.

So the deboss tip doesn’t really work with the Cricut Foil.

Silhouette Brand Foil Transfer

I’ve seen a few you tube videos of people using the Silhouette foil transfer sheets, it’s intended to be used with the Curio machine, so I hope the foil doesn’t get discontinued like the Curio machine. But I thought I would give it a shot. They’re a little pricier than the Cricut foils and fewer color choices. I mainly use gold, silver and rose gold anyway, so it’s not a huge deal for me. Sometimes they go on sale, so keep an eye out for that.

It’s a lot thicker than the Cricut Foil and you need to remove the back carrier sheet before placing it over whatever you’re foiling.

Remove the backing sheet!!

I started out with the 100lb cardstock default pressure again. When I first remove the film after it’s done, it looks kind of scary, but you can clean up the excess pieces and edges with blue painters tape or Washi tape.

After cleaning it up, the results are pretty good. It’s REALLY shiny compared to the Cricut Foil. The filled circles look spectacular! Pretty smooth and flat. It occasionally misses parts of some of the letters and the edges aren’t super crisp.

Filled Circles before cleaning up the edges

After cleaning up the edges with Washi tape.

I tried the 100lb card stock setting with More pressure, that came out ok, the edges are not as clean as the default pressure.

Silhouette Foil, 100lb cardstock, More Pressure

I also tried the Medium cardstock setting, Default pressure, just to compare the results. The foil did not stick at all!!

80lb cardstock setting, Default pressure

Overall, I think I like the results with the 100lb cardstock, default pressure the best. The lettering is OK, but it would not be suitable for really small text. I don’t think this would be a great option for very detailed, intricate designs either. It worked really well with the filled circles, so this could be a good option for filled shapes or thicker solid stripes.

It’s another foiling technique you can use if you work primarily with the Cricut App, or you don’t want to purchase the Foil Transfer tool or the Foil Quill.

I just got my Silhouette Portrait 3 machine, so I’m excited to try the Silhouette foil with that in the future!