LOOK WHAT I'VE BEEN MAKING

I've been doing an online class for an altered tin project, and I photographed the stages to show you. It used a couple of techniques I hadn't tried before.

The basic project required half a tin - so you get to keep the lid for another time. Then you had to tear masking tape into little bits and cover every inch of the tin, inside and out. I wasn't particularly sure about this stage because it was a nice shiny tin bought for altering. Anyway, since the whole point was to learn something new I did eventually do it, and admit to it being quite a therapeutic process. At this stage I also added a hanging wire to the back held on by strips of tape.

The next stage was to paint over the masking tape and then almost immediately rub most of the paint off. As you can see this gave a rather nice effect, and the dark paint went into the cracks and made a crazy paving effect. A coat of sealant went on the outside, but leaving the top edge and the inside uncoated for a better surface to stick things to.

Then it was decoration time and I put a large cabinet photo into the back, with a bottletop decoration. I don't know how well the photo shows that the other images are mounted in a 3D effect - in layers one above the other. To achieve this you make a hollow square out of cardboard and put it behind the image to support it - and I added tabs at the sides too for extra support. It gives a really interesting effect. The final stage is to edge and decorate the tin, which I've done with german scrap and some chipboard swirls painted gold then antiqued.

This piece is another of my stories - there's the man of the house and his sweet wife with a baby and their charming daughters, with their happy home pictured at the front. But there's a shadow over all of this - in that Father has a mistress an opera dancer (pictured in the bottlecap). Despite the appearance of Victorian domesticity, all is not as it seems behind closed doors ......