the new Minc foil applicator from Heidi Swapp

Last week I got a fun surprise in the mail: a brand new Minc Foil Applicator from Heidi Swapp. It’s awesome. With the touch of a button you can add foil to any design you can print out on a laser printer. Bright, shiny foil, that comes in a bunch of colors including my personal fave, gold. I have so many ideas of what I’m going to do with this thing! Keep reading for the lowdown on this nifty new machine and a quick video showing you just how easy it is to use.

NOTE: I was provided this product for free, but all opinions expressed are my own. This post may contain affiliate links.

The Minc Foil Applicator is 19.5×5 inches, which means it’s wide enough to accept 12×12 paper, but it’s slim and lightweight so it doesn’t take up much storage room. And it’s super easy to use. Within just a few minutes of taking it out of the box I was able to add foil to a few Minc accessory products to add a little gold glam to one of my favorite photos of me and my husband:

It’s pretty fun to send a plain black design into the machine and have it come out all pretty and shiny. There are plenty of colors of foil to choose from. They come on a roll 12 inches wide by 10 feet long, so each roll of foil can be used for lots of different projects.

The foil catches the light and changes color depending on the angle you’re looking at it from:

The Minc has four pressure rollers that move your project through the machine, which applies even heat across the entire project. The heat causes the foil to react with the toner on your project, permanently transferring the foil onto any area covered by toner. This means you can use the Minc with the preprinted Minc accessories AND with any design you print with black toner from a laser printer. The Minc can accept paper, cardstock, vellum, chipboard, and even thin wood veneer.

I’ll be sharing a new project using the Minc each month for the next few months, but today I just wanted to introduce the machine, so I made a quick video showing how it works:

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Easy, right?

I did notice that on many of my transfers you can see a few small black flecks in the foil – this is normal and may be caused by bits of dust on the original project. Also, if you’re printing your own items with a laser printer, it may take a few tries to get the transfer right, so do a test before trying to foil a large project. I found it works best if you tell the printer to print at the highest quality possible as opposed to the “conserve toner” setting. So far I’ve tried two different laser printers – the prints from one didn’t come out very black, and the foil didn’t transfer very well as a result. The other worked much better. If you don’t have a laser printer, you can get a laser print from a print shop like Kinkos or Staples.

Here’s a few more closeups of the Minc accessories I used this month:

The Minc Foil Applicator and Starter Kit retails at $149.00, and each roll of foil retails for $9.99. Minc accessories range from from $2.99 to $12.99. Click here to see all the items in the collection (I can’t wait to get my hands on these butterflies!). You can find the Minc at Hobby Lobby and Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts, as well as locally owned craft stores and online shops, and it’s available on Amazon for just $130 right now!