My first attempt to guild with real gold leaf has been a total disaster. I can’t get it to stick to the gum arabic or to the instacol. ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!! If things go much worse I will have to start all over again because I ignored my better judgment and started guilding on my inked drawing instead of a test piece. 
Bad scribe. Baaaaaaaad scribe!
Much Later…
OK. I think I may be getting somewhere. But first let me say that my respect for the mideaval guilder has deepend greatly this evening.
After many little gold (or nearly) blobs on the edge of my perga, I seem to have gotten a tiny feel for this maddening challenging craft. A tiny feel, mind you, but I was able to get it to finally stick. However, those once small-seeming areas to be guilded now seem as vast as the ocean! LOL!
One thing I learned tonight… to paint the gold size a smidge past the edge of the area I wanted to guild. (i.e. onto the inked line) Why? By the time the middle of the sized area is ready for the gold leaf, the edges are dry and the gold leaf won’t stick to them. Maybe there is a trick I don’t know (OK. I’m sure there are several), but that’s what I had to do. Also, the books and websites out there make this seem a helluvalot easier than I found it to be. *sigh* G’Nite!
