Small balls of gold or silver are placed between sheets of tissue paper laid in a leather pouch. This is beaten repeatedly but carefully with a heavy wooden hammer flattening the balls into paper thin sheets.
These silver leaf sheets are very lustrous and extremely fragile and often break up during use.Also known a "vark" these nano millimeter sheets are used in Indian cusine as a garnish. Shivani buys these directly from the craftsmen in Lucknow, India. They are amused when they learn what she does with them. Shivani embeds the "vark' in oil paints to add a brilliance to the paintings.
