I gilded my
Navigators of the Mystic Sea deck in
Tsukineko Brilliance Starlite Black, which is a shimmery graphite color. I don't have a before/after comparison pic, but the edges were just as white as the card borders to begin with. For you others who use these Tsukineko pads, how many decks do can you usually do with one before you refill/reroll your pad?
I chose this deck and this color for a couple reasons: this was my first attempt at this, and I didn't want to mess up a HTF deck or choose a really dramatic color that would show mistakes easily. The imagery in this deck is very bold, and I didn't want the edges to compete, so the Starlite Black seemed like a good choice.
The only additional materials I used were some newspapers to lay out the cards on, and some paper towels and water to clean up the cards.
For application, I grab the card and drag each card edge and corner through the inkpad once or twice. After the first card, I didn't even worry about if I was being messy. At least with this deck it's not really about where you put the ink; it's more about what the ink will adhere to in that amount of time (the borders of the cards where there's breaks in the lamination) and what it won't (any laminated part).
Once I got it good and inky, I blotted/wiped the extra ink off both faces of the card with a dry paper towel. If you drag towards the edges you'll be less likely to smear more on the card, but don't worry if you do - it'll come off. Then I used a damp (not soaking wet!) paper towel to wash off any remaining ink smears, fingerprints, etc. The important thing is to make sure you scrutinize them closely at this point - any mess you find now will wash off, but I guarantee nothing if it gets left on there for more than a minute or two since that's the longest I left anything. When done, I laid the cards out side by side on some newspaper. This is pretty quick-drying stuff, but I didn't see any reason to take chances so I let them sit overnight before re-stacking them.
For anyone that's scared of trying this, it's not scary at all! It's way less tedious and risky than trimming, and it didn't make my hands hurt afterwards (not that I'm gonna stop trimming anytime soon either, but...).
