Playing with Metal

Mom, Susan and I recently had another fun Art Day. For this workshop, we gleaned inspiration from Beryl Taylor’s article in the current issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine, rolled up our sleeves, and unrolled our metal!

Playing with metal, it turns out, is quite fun! For these pieces, I used lightweight rolls of copper, brass, and colored aluminum. We experimented with layering alcohol inks, UTEE, gesso, Lumiere paint and wax over dry embossed designs.

After completing an assortment of samples, I machine stitched some of my favorites onto a piece of light green hand-dyed silk (one of Mom’s and my previous experiments!). “Leftover favorites” were stitched onto a piece of purchased tangerine fabric. Both pieces are still in progress, in need of borders/backing and decisions regarding further embellishing. But, you get the idea…. playing with metal is FUN!

Lessons Learned Notes: In our experiments, alcohol ink will removed the color from colored aluminum. Keep that in mind if you are planning on tinting on top of the factory color! If you wish to use various colors of regular embossing powder on the metal, try gesso as a base coat first. I didn’t do that on my turquoise piece, and as a result the embossed layer falls off in big chips if the metal is flexed. The UTEE, however, worked well when built up into layers, heated from the bottom.