Splendid Sunday

Today was a really interesting experience, because today I played with . . . METAL!

This is a craft metal, about 40 gauge I think (whatever that means!).  It was fairly easy to mark and cut and even sew, but firm enough to hold shape.  On the piece above, I marked a grid and then stitched in alternate squares using a free-motion pebble-ish stitch.

This one started out as a candy wrapper.  It was already pretty crumpled, so I straightened it with my fingers and rubbed an emery board over the surface.  You can just see a few of the places where the red color was sanded away.  The silver pieces are kitchen foil, stitched with green thread, and glued to the larger piece.  That was an easy one!

I used a stencil to draw these leaves and stitched the vein lines.  The process is getting more involved at this point.

I decided that the stencil worked so well, why not try stamps!  These are three that I chose and they provided varying levels of success.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to get a clear photo of how dimensional these pieces are.  And it took some experimentation to find an ink that wouldn’t rub off easily.

This “report” wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t show the failures – and there were quite a few!  That gold foil was beautiful, but very thin and the stamp rubbing was so fragile that I couldn’t even lift the piece without losing some of the impression.  I used the 40g metal on the  two in the center and the stamps were either too detailed, of not deep enough.  That’s supposed to be a fish there on the left, and the right hand one was the name stamp.  The piece on the bottom is not really too bad, but the stencil was way too fine and intricate for this material.  That one will remain a paint only stencil!

This is from the piece I chose as a background.  I actually made this piece back before I starting posting about the journey through this book. 

And here is the completed page.  I really like the way the black felt behind each piece contrasts with the reds in the background and highlights the metal pieces.  Very pretty!

Overall, this was a successful adventure and I learned a lot about what tools work best.  Now, I’ve got a major mess to clean up!