Tutorial: Altered Tin Heart

Just a little quickie today. I had kind of a rough day yesterday (and the day before, and the day before) and today's the make-up. It's decided. It's been so dreary and rainy and I'm completely effected by light so things that usually wouldn't have been hard have been difficult. So to perk myself and maybe you up as well- here's a super quick and cute idea of altering a tin heart. Where to get a tin heart? You could try a flea market, or major craft stores sell rusty cut out hearts. I used one of my old cream lunch trays and simply used Tim Holtz's tonic scissors to free hand cut it out. He claimed they cut metal, I checked, they did. Then hit the edges of your heart with either heavy duty sandpaper or a metal file to smooth away any sharp points (sounds like a metaphor doesn't it?).
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Altered Tin Heart: An Easy Way for Applying Text and Imagery to Metal

Materials and Tools
A tin heart
Rub-on's ( I used Pink Paislee)
Craft Stick or Rub-on applicator
Crop-a-dile with grommets

Step One: Use your Crop-a-dile to punch holes in the top of your heart as shown in the photo at right. Then use the Crop-a-dile's grommet setting function to set grommets in the holes. For the how to of using a Crop-a-dile check out this Youtube video here, or a past post using this tool, here.



Step Two: Select your rub-on's and remove their protective protective backing sheet. You should be able to lightly touch the back of the top piece and feel the rub-on's there. They'll be slightly tacky. You may decided to cut out the rub-on's you've decided to use from the rest. (This is important when you're using a rub-on alphabet collection to spell a word- you don't want to accidentally transfer three "e's" when you needed one). Lay your rub-on onto the heart where desired and using the flat side of the top of your craft stick begin to rub-on. As the rub-on releases from the top plastic it should turn cloudy. It will appear crisp on your tin surface.

Step Three: After rub-on your first image, overlap that area with a second image. The Pink Paislee set I'm showing were wonderfully distressed looking to begin with so I was able to do partial transfers and overlap without worrying about the quality of my transferred image.

Step Four: Finish it up! When I worked off the edge of my tin adding rub-on's some of the rub-on extended over the edge. To clean up the edge I used my hand to gently wrap behind or wipe away anything that protruded. Then place a clean piece of plastic, and with a cloth, or your rub-on stick gently rub over your completed transfers to make sure they are all adhering completely. If you want to distress even more, skip this last part and instead hit your surface with the sandpaper again. Sand here or there, or even slightly hammer the tin to give it a mottled appearance.