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.

Tinned Treasures

It started as a challenge to my creativity. I'd asked my Dad to pick me up some old lunch trays I'd seen at a garage sale he'd organized. When he brought over the trays he gave me a box of old cookie tins too. Thought I'd want them too. I think cookie tins are kind of pointless and I really had no use for them- but it's my dad and he'd got them for me so I mumbled thanks and tossed them in the garage. But later I was thinking about art and how really we should be able to make amazing art out of anything. So I started to play around with the tins. I did a post a while back with my first experiments altering their finish. I'd crackle painted one and spray painted another trying to see what I had to work with. Then I dropped it to do the book stuff.

So a couple of days ago when I needed to try and quick come up with a submission idea for the next Sew Somerset my eye fell on the tins and I thought I'd give them a try. Anything can be art right? The tin on the right is my first attempt. I really struggled with it at first. I knew I wanted to use some fabric and wire- :) and I knew I needed to include stitching, and because of the depth I thought it'd be cool to have things at different levels. So those were the parameters.

It turned out kind of fun. The central flower is actually fabric petals that I cut, coated with gel medium and then stuck to a mini plastic easter egg. To attach the wire, I used my handy dandy crop-a-dile and punched holes. The little silhouette at left is courtesy of Singlestone Studios. I was trying to channel the whole cameo look.

So there you have it- a little creativity and now I'm looking at the tins in my garage in a completely different light. Thanks Dad!

To tin or not to tin...

I played around with a tin project today. Something that I've had in mind for a couple of days- I was kind of just at the edge of really visualizing it and then today it clicked. I painted it with Tim Holtz crackle paint and then wrapped the outside with fabric and the inside with pages torn from a book. It makes a great shadowbox! So now I'm trying to figure out where to take it next. I held up a few items just to get a feel for how they'd look. I know that whatever I do I want to make use of the depth and do some layering. I figure I can hang an item as well as wire through the tin either through the back or the sides. It would make a very cool base for an assemblage. Something else that ocurred to me as I was working on it was maybe masking over an oval in the center. That would leave the reflective tin surface as sort of a mirror and would reflect anything I hung from the center.

So lots of options including turning it into a photo frame. I was also planning on doing a wire loop de loop border along the outside of the piece. I also like the idea of turning it into a sihlouette sort of thing too. What to do, what to do. I have to apologize for the heart pic. It's kind of fuzzy because I couldn't get it to stop moving. Oh well!

Oh, and then there's embellishing. I could add vintage buttons, I coud use the old keys I have, I could stamp on the background or add a bit of bling...I kind of like the idea of using a sparkly old brooch I have. So many ideas!!! I'd love to know what you would do with this canvas... If you'd like to share!!! Thank you!