Tutorial: Hand Stamped Tin Embellishments

I'm all about embellishing to add that extra special "wow" to my mixed media works. To do that I turn to metal and, of course, fabric.

Today's embellishment idea is to reuse metal sheeting or tin to create easy, but sensational, additions to your collages or assemblages. When I say simple and easy I mean simple and e-a-s-y. Seriously. :)

So give it a look and then give it a try!
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Tutorial: Hand Stamped Tin Embellishments

Materials and Tools
Tin or Sheet Metal
Steel Block (not pictured)
Hammer
Metal Letter Stamp Set
Tonic Scissors, or Tin Snips
Wet Dry Sandpaper or Metal File
Crop-a-dile (optional)
Embroidery needle and floss (optional)

Step One: Cut out your shape with the Tonic Scissors or tin snips. If the metal is soft enough you can use an old scissors. Be sure to either file or sand your sharp edges smooth. Gently round off any sharp corners.

Step Two: Put your steel block on the floor or other hard surface. Then select your letter and make sure that it is facing the correct direction, then place it where you want and holding it firmly in place, strike straight down on it with your hammer. The hammer in my photo is facing the wrong direction because my five year old is actually manning the hammer while I hold the letter stamp. Continue with each letter of your word.


Step Three: You may wish to glue your embellishment to your piece but we decided to stitch ours on. To add holes in the tin I reached for my handy dandy crop-a-dile. In fact, I held the tin heart over the leather I was going to back the piece with and cut a hole through them both simultaneously. The leather scrap was actually a swatch from IKEA of the fabric of the leather sectional I'd like for our downstairs. Easy and quick!!!

Step Four: Then using embroidery floss and a needle, we stitched the leather and tin heart to our canvas. Done!

Tutorial: Transformed Tins (Part 1)

Visit a flea market and you'll find a ton of these. Most garage sales can hook you up. Find a rummage sale and you'll find a gold mine of... tins. Odds are if you search your garage or attic you'll even find a box of these. I've an idea- why not try using them as a metal substrate in your mixed media art? Either the cover or the container itself are fabulous bases for either a shadowbox assemblage or a collaged wall hanging. I'm sure the more you give this some thought the more the ideas will come. I'd love to know what you come up with so please leave a comment if something occurs to you. Together we'll transform the tins of the world into art. :)
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"Fly"- Collaged Tin Cover

Materials and Tools
Cover to an old metal tin
Gesso
Acrylic Paint
16-gauge steel wire
Embroidery Floss
Butterfly Sticker- Artsy Urban by Melody Ross
Scrap of vintage book paper
Glue stick
Pencils- 2B and white colored
Ink pad
Clear Acrylic Alpha Stamp Set and Block
Paintbrush
Needle
Scissors
Wire Cutter
Cylinder with 1" diameter
Crop-a-dile

Directions
Step One- Using a paintbrush or sponge brush, cover your entire tin cover with gesso. Let dry. Don't worry about even or perfect coverage here. Applying the acrylic in the next step will cover up any text or imagery that's on the tin, but I rather like some of it showing through on the backside. .


Step Two- Choose a color and haphazardly paint the tin with acrylic paint, letting some of the white of the gesso show. I used the pool color by Ranger. It comes in the little daubers. I wouldn't recommend buying all your paint in these little things. I just happened to have it on hand and wanted this color. Much cheaper to buy it in the craft bottles. :)

Step Three- Using your 1" diameter cylinder, wrap the 16-gauge wire around it to form a coil. As you wind, slide off the coils, and continue to wrap until it's your desired length.




Step Four- Using your hands, flatten and then seperate the coils to form loops. Their shape and whether they overlap or not is the result of how much you seperate them.




Step Five- Cut a 24" length of embroidery floss and tie one end to the end of your looped edging. This is to anchor the floss.





Step Six- Use your wire loops as a guide, and with a 2B pencil, place a mark where you'd like to make a hole in the tin's edge. Mark at the point that the wire crosses at the bottom of the loop. That is where you'll be stitching your wire to your tin. Using a crop-a-dile, chomp 1/8" holes into the edge of your tin where marked.


Step Seven- Using your needle and floss, begin to stitch the wire loops to the edge of your tin as shown. Go over and around the wire, and through the hole in the tin.




Step Eight- Then with needle and thread, cross over the wire that is in between the loops and bring your needle to the back of the tin and ready to insert into the next hole. Then from the back, bring it through the loop again, and then insert into the hole. Repeat until entire length is tacked down.



Step Nine- When you've reached the point you started at, cut any excess wire and wrap the cut end around the first loop you stitched down. Finish the piece by adding the sticker. Then cut out a bit of old book paper and using a clear acrylic letters, stamp the word "fly". Doodle with pencils around word. Use a glue stick to adhere below the butterfly stamp.

Art Quote Collage- Inspired by Play

Yesterday I was looking for some inspiration. I was feeling like the thing I was working on wasn't coming together; so frustrated, I moved on to something else. One down. I got a little crazy with that next work, realized the smear of paint was not going to work. Sigh. Two down. I'm sure later I'll come back to it and figure out a new direction to take it, but yesterday, it felt RUINED.

Now desperate for something, anything to actually work out for me, I decided to calm down and just play a little. So I grabbed a little canvas I'd started to paint and collage a while back but set aside when I just wasn't feeling it, and I started to play on that. I got out all the yummy yummy art materials I've collected lately and haven't tried yet and started to piece them all out on this canvas. It got a little busy looking for my taste but it was fun and I couldn't, wouldn't stop. It felt like a luxury to be able to use all of these beautiful art materials and in the process of playing I let myself unwind and enjoy.

The quote came at the end- the very last thing I found and added. It makes me smile to realize that the words of Matisse were just the words I needed to hear when I began this piece. Don't wait for inspiration, don't worry about a lack of it, just go make stuff. You'll find that when you play, the inspiration comes through that very act of letting go and enjoying yourself and your materials. Matisse said it shorter but this is what I heard in his words. :)

Some of the fun materials I used:
An old carpenter's ruler
Melody Ross Artsy Urban line of chipboard stickers
A piece of a birds on a wire decal from Single Stone Studios
Fabric from my Basic Grey for Moda charm packs
Some lovely and fun Rub-on's from Jenni Bowlin studio
Some torn pieces of text from an old swedish poetry book
My fave crackle paint- Broken China from Ranger
Some scraps of Basic Grey's Urban Prarie scrapbooking paper
A couple of old buttons
Quote hand stamped on fabric and then stitched around edge
A wire heart- of course!

Inspired Read:The Artistic Mother by Shona Cole

I accosted someone at the bookstore yesterday. I had run over to get a quick peak at Shona Cole's new book, The Artistic Mother. I fell in love with the projects, her voice throughout the book, and the wonderfully encouraging contributing artists. So when I noticed someone else standing there perusing some of the same books and we started chatting, I had to tell her all about Shona's amazing book. It's funny cause I am not a salesperson by nature, but when I find something worth feeling enthusiastic about I can't stop sharing it. It feels like such an amazing find.

I'm excited too because I've been anticipating Shona's book for some months now. Ever since North Lights Facebook staff starting posting links to her blog and teasing us with allusions to her book. It was so hard to wait. The absolute best part of it though is that the book is BETTER than I'd even imagined. The projects are new and unique, the techniques are all things I want to try, and the inspiration and encouragement is deep.

I was also completely delighted with the connection Shona illustrates between writing and art. Better still she shows how you might use your writing to inspire your art. I noticed that some of her projects had a functional component as well. We moms are busy and yet want to be surrounded with beauty and creativity and Shona features a handmade calender, to-do sheets, planning tips, and other motivational ideas in her projects. Love love love this book. Can't wait to snuggle in this weekend and read it thoroughly. I'm also very grateful to Shona for taking the time to share in book form her how-to experience on being both a Mom, and an Artist. Writing a book is amazingly time consuming and I'm in awe that this mother of five was able to do it and do it so well.

Definitely worth accosting someone with. :) For more on Shona, and her book check out her fabulously inspirational blog, An Artful Life, here. There is also an amazing sounding group starting up soon, that will be working through some of the projects in Shona's book. To find out more about this click on the link above. Now, off to do some art...

Recycled Decor

The last week I've taken a bit of a break from the book projects to concentrate on designing and creating the decor for my local MOPs group meetings. MOPs is short for Mothers of Preschoolers- preschoolers being birth to age 6 or so. This is my fourth and last year- next year Jasper starts Kindergarten. With the book I didn't know if I could be as involved in the decorating and projects as I have in year's past but I found that it's one thing acknowledging that in my head and another actually giving up the position. At the leader's meeting I couldn't help opening up my mouth and suggesting things. Of course, once you suggest things and others agree it's pretty much up to you to execute the ideas as well.

It was just sooo hard. The theme this year is "Together on Planet Mom" and I was pushing for the "go green and it's all one world" interpretation vs. the Space Aliens from another planet interpretation. I envisioned recycled decorations. For instance, using past year's purchases and adapting them to this year's theme. I also thought I'd use old cereal boxes for name tags and the bulletin board and recycle pages from old cookbooks and maps to pull in the Moms One World theme. So with this vision it was completely impossible for me to keep my mouth shut while they were talking space party decorations from the dollar store.

I had fun though and recruited some help so it hasn't been too much and I'm pretty much done and ready to go back to the book stuff. Plus, I figured out that it's good to be focused but it's also important to be able to take a break occasionally and do something for fun. I had fun with the name tags but I had LOTS of fun doing a write up on the theme. It's titled Motherhood Manifesto. One of them sent me a link to submit it to the MOPs international site and crazy thing- they took it! I'd love to have you check it out. So taking the time to do something else had been good. Now I feel like I've escaped the tunnel vision I felt I had before and am able to start again with the book stuff a little refreshed. So that I guess is the moral to this story. WORK HARD but take a break once on a while and HAVE FUN, just cause, too!