FOIL QUILL UNBOXING, SET UP, BEST SILHOUETTE CUT SETTINGS AND DESIGNS
March 08, 2019
Click Here to Purchase the Foil Quill
The Foil Quill is a new tool that can be used with the Silhouette machines (along with other cutting machines) to add foil to paper, faux leather, and even vinyl!
The Foil Quill is getting a lot of buzz in the craft world even while it's still on pre-order (we recommend purchasing through Swing Design). In this Foil Quill unboxing tutorial I'll show you exactly what's in the box along with how to set up the foil quill and provide the best Silhouette cut settings.
Unboxing the Foil Quill: What's Included
There are three different size foil quills: fine tip, standard tip, and wide tip. They can be purchased together as a kit or individually.
Whether you purchase them individually or together as part of the Foil Quill kit, they all include four different machine adapters so they can be used in either the Silhouette machines (CAMEO, Portrait, or Curio), the Cricut machines, Brother Scan N Cut and Sizzix.
The Foil Quill kit includes not only all three size foil quill tips and four adapters, but also three rolls of reactive foil, a roll of tape, and a small metal heat shield.
The foil quill tips heat up using an attached USB cord and when run over heat reactive foil adhere the foil to the surface below. The foils can also be purchased separately or in bundles and come in a wide variety of colors (this is a big advantage over the 1-step Silhouette foil material which is only available in three colors).
Materials that can be foiled include paper, leather, vellum, and even vinyl. Keep in mind the material where the foil is being placed, must be able to fit under the Silhouette rollers.
Tape
Tape is needed to keep the sheet of foil in place while the heated foil quills draws over it applying it to the surface.
Heat Shield
The heat shield is used to protect the surface below the tip while the quill is heating up. When purchasing the individual size foil quill tools you will receive the tool and all four machine adapters.
Designs for the Foil Quill
The Foil Quill will work with any font or cut file - including SVGs and Silhouette Studio designs. It's important to know that the quill will work just like a Silhouette sketch pen or blade applying foil EXACTLY and ONLY where the cut lines are showing. That means the quill will NOT fill a design with foil nor will it fill in a font.
For this reason, single line/drawing fonts and designs specifically designed for sketching or foiling - like these on So Fontsy - are ideal as they will NOT result in an outline. So Fontsy's foil quill and sketch designs include both the SVG and DXF file type. DXF can be opened with standard Silhouette Studio.
I would therefore NOT recommend Silhouette users, who do not have Silhouette Studio Designer Edition or higherpurchase the Foil Quill USB thumb drives offered by We R Memory Keepers.
The reason is, currently, these USBs include SVG designs and PNG designs. Since SVG designs can't be imported with standard Silhouette Studio, those users will need to import the PNG files. But in order to use PNG files the design needs to be traced to create a cut line and when you trace you always get an outline and that defeats the whole purpose of the single line design.
Click here to learn about setting up your Foil Quill and Silhouette cut settings.
