USAQ Blog

Hi!  My name is Sally Lynn MacDonald and this is my fourth post as part of the 2012 Design Team.  I hope you enjoy the project.

I have a stash of metal tags that I often experiment with and add to a deck for inspiration.  I love metal tags because of their strength and resilience.  Today I came across one of my metal tags that was blank on one side.  So today I am going to experiment with metal and US Art Quest’s versatile products to get this tag into the deck.

This piece of metal is made of tin.  It’s messy from my working on the other side.  But I like things to start of in a ‘natural’ state.

The first thing I did was add a little color to the metal with alcohol-based inks.  I also added a little texture, with a piece of lightweight cheesecloth, adhered to the bottom, right corner with clear-drying Perfect Paper Adhesive (PPA) in Matte finish.  Because of my metal substrate – I was a bit of a brat and hit this with a heat tool to speed up drying time.  Be careful when handling hot metal though!

Next I used the PPA to collage some punched out book text onto the tag.

And I also collaged a book text flower onto another piece of metal that I’m going to layer.  This is probably brass – but I like mixed metals.  It’s a Vintaj metal blank that I’ve run through an embossing folder and rounded the corners to make it contrast to the background tag.  I brushed the PPA across the entire metal surface to give it a bit of tooth for the next step.

Next, I floated a layer of 101 Heavy Artist Cement over a stencil, overlapping the metal and the book text flower element.

I then layed the stencil over the larger metal tag and did the same where the pattern would match up when the pieces were layered together.

Not content to do the same thing twice, I added additional texture to the 101 Heavy on the smaller metal piece by laying a small piece of mesh fabric over the top and gently wrapping it around the edge of the piece so that it would come into contact with the more raised portions of the cement and give me a random impression.

Remove the mesh… and see what you get.  Isn’t this a cool texture?

I hit these two piece with the heat gun, but just for a moment to start the process.  Because it is metal, the surface can be heated up a bit to help.  But realistically  I need them to dry naturally, for the most part, or I’ll just end up with a dry ‘skin’ and the material underneath will stay soft and not hold the texture and shape for the steps that are coming up.

So while I’m waiting for the cement to dry, I took a small pinch of dicrofibers and placed them on a non-stick teflon craft sheet.  I held them in place with a wood skewer while I ran the heat tool over the top to fuse to each other in a thin layer.

Once the cement was dried, I added a wash of Perfect Pigments Fluid Acrylic Paint in Cobalt Turquoise Hue to the corners of both metal pieces.  I used my heat tool to dry this thoroughly.

Then I added a wash over the top and remaining areas of Yellow Ochre.  This really gives the paper a vintage look and goes into all those textural nooks and crannies of the cement.

Lastly, I used the texture sponge to dot the edges with a bit of Burnt Umber.

I brushed a small amount of Cobalt Turquoise Hue onto the tips of the petals of this mulberry flower as well as the edges of this cardstock ruler embellishment.

And used the texture sponge to add a bit of the color to this tin dragonfly embellishment as well.  I sprayed it with water and used a baby wipe to remove some of the paint, to form a ‘patina’ appearance.

One thing I hadn’t done with my metal tags yet was to layer multiple pieces of metal together.  Usually this has to be accomplished by drilling a hole through the pieces to attach them.  But I decided to test the durability of the 101 Heavy for this purpose as well.  So I layered the Dicrofibers underneath the square piece of metal and adhered them to the top of the metal tag.

Lastly, I stained a bit of ribbon with the Yellow Ochre paint and ran it through a hole I punched in the tag with my Cropadile.  I layered a small mica circle around the hole for embellishment.

Here is a closeup view of all the wonderful textures on the tag.

And the final tag view.

So the verdict is a resounding ‘YES!’.  You can mix Heavy 101 with metal and create some neat effects, plus utilize the strength of the material to adhere your elements to one another.

Now if Spring would just get the hint from this tag and decide to show up…

US Art Quest Products used today:

• 101 Heavy Artist Cement
• Perfect Paper Adhesive (PPA) in Matte finish
• 3/4″ Stroke Brush
• Dicrofibers, Bark color

• Perfect Pigments, fluid acrylic paints in Cobalt Turquoise Hue, Yellow Ochre and Burnt Umber
• Tinz – rusted tin shapes, Dragonfly
• Mica Rings, Small
• Texture Sponge

Thanks for looking!

Sally Lynn MacDonald
www.sallylynnmacdonald.com
www.facebook.com/sallylynn.macdonald