WOO HOO

Woo hoo, look what I've been playing with today! I was so impressed with Sharon's metalwork on her matchbox that I ordered some of the aluminium from LB Crafts. I already had a book about this called Metal Effects that I bought in a sale, so I thought I would have a go.

This is a motif from a Design sourcebook - and it might with hindsight have been a bit too detailed for a first attempt. I put the design over the metal and taped it all to the soft mat I was working on, then with a ball stylus traced the pattern. This is the other side to the one I was working on. Once I lifted off the pattern I found I needed to go over some of the detail - you do have to press quite hard and my arthritic fingers don't like it. Like a say, a less detailed image might have worked better!

Then working on this other side I followed the instructions in my book to paint over it with black acrylic, then rub most of it off. This produced an antiquey effect which I like a lot. I was going to leave it like this when I remembered that I had some metallic rub on which I dabbed onto the oak leaves (can you actually tell that it's oak leaves and acorns?). This gave a subtle effect, but when I had another go using a permanent marker on the acorn cups I got a beautifully vivid colour that I rather like! To finish off I folded the (sharp) edges over a 3 x 3" piece of card. This wasn't a bad result with the limited tools I had at my disposal, but I didn't want to buy anything special until I'd had a little play first .... now I guess I'll be off to buy some of the texture roller and other tools you can get!!