Video

You can message me at facebook.com/scourgealters or scourgealters@gmail.com :) Most retro foiling projects are priced between $300-$500 depending on the details of each card.

I can never 100% guarantee tournament legality as that is always up to the head judge no matter what cards you have. This technique produces the most "judge friendly" foils that I know of and I have had sever head judges at various REL events approve them for play. I have yet to hear from a client that they had a judge disallow them. Judges have become more accepting of alters in general in recent years due to a lot of the Secret Lair stuff being pretty unrecognizable compared to the base printing. The biggest thing that this method takes into consideration is texture on the card surface and thickness/stiffness of the card so that these are within the correct weight tolerance for normal cards (not being marked in the deck).

I've updated the way that I process some Artifact, Land, Red, Green, and White cards. I've developed a splice method by which I remove parts of the primary donor foil and replace them with blank foil frame area from a secondary donor foil of the same type/color. This allows me to do cleaner work on frames that don't like to work well with paints. Black and Blue cards look fine and play nice with paints but the other cards tend to have some reds and yellows in them that make reworking the frame difficult with the opacity of the paint. I'll be releasing an updated video sometime this year for the new splice method.

Krylon Colormaxx Crystal Clear Satin is what I typically use. For some foils I also use Rustoleum Artist's Touch semi-gloss.

Thank you so much 😀

probably not

I've had many clients play with these types of alters in tournaments varying from FNM to larger GP events. I play with them in events as well and have never had any issues. The cards are clearly recognizable and they shuffle and feel just like a normal foil. I can never guarantee that every judge is going to allow any given alter though.

This type of frame replacement is $200.

@Kyle Blankenship oh wow, that's pretty reasonable for that amount of work! Will have a think

It's a lot of work but making foil alters that are as clean and judge friendly as possible takes more time :)

Thanks!

Thanks a lot!

Depends. In some ways it makes it more unique and could fetch a higher price on open market, but the card becomes less of a liquidable asset since stores probably won’t want to try to move it for you and the card is technically damaged and to them it is less valuable.

I can't guarantee that any alter will be approved by every judge. That being said, I have spent years refining this method to make alters that are as "judge friendly" as possible. These cards are within the weight range of regular old foils and have the same flex to them so they are indistinguishable when shuffled with normal old foils. I've had plenty of clients play with these in events ranging from FNM to day 2 of a GP.

in this day in age you should have backup cards to not only deck alter but also foils in general. plenty of people get DQ for playing foils as they can curl

Thanks!

Thanks, Grant! I've weighed these and depending on which set I use for the foiling layer the weight is between 2.05 and 2.07 grams. A normal retro foil weighs about 2.05. Some retro foils are a bit lighter at around 1.9 grams. These are from sets like Onslaught or Mercadian Masques that used a thinner foil layer compared to most old sets. So, all in all, they are so close in weight and there is enough variation in weight with old foils that these are indistinguishable when shuffled together with other retro foils. They also have the same flex feel as regular retro foils. I do take commissions and if you're interested in placing an order, you can email me at scourgealters@gmail.com

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried acrylic inks and while they get closer to the correct color, it still isn't ideal.

A few of the tools that I use are handmade so they're not something that you could go buy at the store but here is a general list: Frogtape (painter's tape for keeping the printout of the text in place) #16 xacto blades (for scraping the art and text off of the card as well as for etching out the space in the back of the foil for the name and set symbol) acetone or alcohol (for cleaning the non-foil card to prep for adhesion) Plexiglass and some small cabinet handles (for the tool that I stick the donor foil layer to when I am doing the adhesion process) Scotch repositionable spray mount for the adhesive Krylon Crystal Clear Satin varnish to finish the surface of the card Golden Fluid Acrylic paints Princeton paint brushes Clear ruler Metal ruler The desk that I have with the light box is custom made but I believe similar things exist for architecture work.

For the underlying card, I recommend LP or better. Additionally, you will want to wipe the card down with either acetone or alcohol to make sure that there isn't any hand oils or grim on the surface of the card. For the donor foil, you can use cards that have considerable scuffing or clouding of the foil since the varnish applied at the end will fill in the blemishes and bring it back up to a smooth surface that should look nice.

Hey, Anson! Thanks for checking the video out :D Whenever possible, I try to find donor foils that have a matching artist credit but we sadly don't have any blue foils with your art on them :( The card name text is a larger font size and easier to etch space out for but the card type and art credit text is small enough that it becomes a bit rough looking when I've tried to clear the foiling for that text. Additionally, on older cards like Transmute, the credit is right where the foil shooting star is. In cases like this, I just tend to erase the credit text entirely and just use my altered art signature to help fill that space.

@@kyleblankenship6647 Thanks for responding, you've given me a great idea. Be well.💡

I wasn't expecting that! haha. Love your art man! I bought some Crimson Kobolds a few days ago :D

You can do this but the text on modern cards is black rather than the white text of old frame cards. Additionally, the card layout is a bit different and the position of the text is not lined up correctly. Because of this, I only do Modern -> old frame foiling if I am also doing a language swap on the card so that I can redo the text and put it in the correct spot.

You will always have scratch marks at first. The varnish spray at the end helps smooth everything out :)

Active time is usually about 6 hours but it varies quite a bit since there are so many steps in the process where things can go wrong. Sometimes, foils don't cooperate and I need to re-prep the donor foil, sometimes the adhesive doesn't work out and the whole project needs to be redone from scratch. I did a Dockside Extortionist turned into a old frame foil with Japanese text and after several misadventures, the total active time to complete was well over 15 hours spread over the course of several weeks.

Hello Juan, For orders, you can email me at scourgealters@gmail.com

The Bayou was done with a foil Swamp!

@@kyleblankenship6647 thank you!!

Especially when there already is a foil vamp tutor with that art and frame lol

I foil new cards as well. The process is pretty much the same at the core: Strip down a donor foil, remove the foil backing from the areas you want to show through, press it in the vise with adhesive, then do touchup work with paint.