Adding Gold Accents To My Pink Studio Cabinets

After considering many different options for adding gold accents (paint pen, gold leaf, liquid gilding, etc.), I decided to try the Krylon 18kt. gold leafing pen (affiliate link).

I figured that a pen would be the fastest and easiest way to add gold accents. I’ve used gold leaf on cabinets before, and while it wasn’t difficult at all, it was a very time-consuming project. It required a lot of taping, two coats of adhesive to make sure the leaf stuck really well, and lots of patience.

If you missed out on my green and gold kitchen, you can see it here, and you can see the gold leafing process here.

But for these cabinets, I wanted something quick and easy (at least for now) so that I could just test out the idea and see if I even like it on the pink. Well, as it turns out, I love it! I absolutely love that bit of subtle shimmer that it adds to the cabinets. Here’s a look at the middle section with the six drawers. The top two have the gold accents and the rest are plain pink.

And here’s that section with all six drawers done. I love this subtle shimmer!

One issue I had is that after using the pen on several drawers, the ink (which I’m pretty sure is alcohol ink) wasn’t flowing as freely as when the pen was new. I could tell that it had dried bits of ink in the nib.

To clean it, I pulled the nib out of the pen (it pulls out very easily)…

And then soaked it in a little container (I used a Bai lid) of isopropyl alcohol.

I rolled the nib around in the alcohol, emptied the lid, and filled it with fresh alcohol and did it again. I think I did that three times before the nib appeared clean, free of dried ink bits, and porous again.

Then I dried it on a paper towel, popped it back into the pen, re-primed the pen according to the directions, and continued on with the project.

To get the lines as perfect as possible, I did two passes on each side. The first pass was on the corner of the trim, and I held my hand as rigid as possible with my ring finger on the edge of the door or drawer, and pulled the marker down the edge while keeping my hand in the same position the whole way. My ring finger along the edge is what kept me on a straight line.

Here’s how it looked after that first pass.

The second pass was more on top of the trim. To do that, I held the pen so that my middle finger was right on the edge of the nib of the pen.

And then I placed my middle finger on the edge of the trim, and pulled the pen down the length of the trim. That middle finger being right up against the nib, and right on the side of the trim, kept the line straight all the way down.

Here’s a look at one finished side…

It’s so beautiful and shimmery and subtle. I wish y’all could see it in person!

I’m not quite finished yet because I was down for the count this weekend with a cold. But I’ll be back at it today!