Gold Leafing a Matte Blue Rainbow Vase

I am not very good at leaving things alone. I paint things, I wax things and sometimes I gild things. Today I am gilding. I don’t often pick things up from the Dollar Spot at Target, but I kind of fell in love with this monotone matte blue rainbow vase. For this project I used the matte blue vase, Aleene’s Tacky Glue (great to have on hand for most projects), a small flat paintbrush, a soft fluffy paint brush and real gold leaf. Don’t use the imitation gold leaf, it’s really nice and it’s a lot more affordable, but overtime it will start to change colors. If you want the gold leaf to stay gold, buy the real gold kind. The gold leaf that I bought was about $13 for 3o, 1.5″ sheets. I did not do any tutorial photos since this is a very simple project.

With the flat paintbrush, carefully spread glue along one or two rays of the rainbow. Don’t do too many rays at once, you don’t want the glue to dry before you can add the gold leafing. Also, don’t add too much glue, it’ll get messy looking and it will take forever to dry. Grab a sheet of gold leaf and gently press onto the glued ray. Remove the sheet and repeat the process around the entire ray. If there are pieces of gold leaf that are loose along your vases rays, leave them for now. Continue adding glue to the rays and gold leafing until they are all gilded. You may find that working in one direction, outwards or inwards works better for you. I personally, preferred working left to right. Allow the glue Tacky Glue to dry completely. Once your vase is completely dry, use the soft fluffy paint brush and gently brush away the loose gold leaf (you can do this over a container to capture the gold bits for future projects).

The gold leaf is very subtle, but it gives a warm glow to this already cute vase and helps tie it in with the pieces I have displayed. Despite the fact that you might not be able to find this exact vase, you can gold leaf other vases and ceramics. Target is always putting out cute ceramics, so keep your eye out!