Gold Foil

Good enough for monks illustrating manuscripts. If you are going for proper gold leaf it is a noble metal meaning non-reactive (meaning there should be no reactions with varnish etc) I think its a good idea, I remember watching Fred Dibnah covering weather vains ine the stuff. It's exceptionally thin but looked easy to work with.

Nothing useful to add, I've never used it. But many artists have and it can look fabulous....Klimpt's Kiss etc. So I'll be following how you go with this AG.

I've seen gold leaf used in a painting, and very impressive it was - though a bit easy to overdo. On the rare occasions I've wanted a metallic effect, as opposed to pure gold, I've used metallic acrylics - mostly for cards and that sort of thing. It does work, and you can varnish it. I have to yield to others on whether you can/should varnish real gold leaf - I'm far too mean to use that, but I do remember a discussion (that there was a discussion, not the details of it) on the Natural Pigments page 'Painting Best Practice' on Facebook; and perhaps on the Natural Pigments website. I think there was also something on the MITRA website run by the University of Delaware (and very good it is too) which can I think be accessed from the Natural Pigments website if Google can't find it. I don't say this with any confidence, never having done it, but gold leaf might be difficult to apply to achieve the fine detail of military cap badges - illuminated manuscripts were achieved by cutting gold leaf in the shape of the letter beneath and then applying it - this could be a problem with something like a fairly ornate cap badge. Incidentally, some companies make gold and other metallic oil paints as well - not the real thing, that would be prohibitively expensive, but synthetic metals; how long they last I don't know - acrylic gold paint seems to be as permanent as the normal paints. PS - I bet Alan Owen could answer this: he used gold leaf in his career fairly extensively, I believe.

Genuine 24ct gold leaf comes in square flakes so thin they cannot be handled as they disintegrate on touch. It has to be applied by using a gilders' 'brush' which is designed for the job. Dutch gold is a common alternative which has about 15% gold content with other metals in a mix and is more robust but still needs special care. Dutch gold can be coloured by heating, giving it a copperish tinge. That about exhausts my knowledge of gilding, which can be used on any surface including paper and canvas, other than real gold leaf is very expensive and Dutch gold less so, but not cheap.