Journey and Discover - Metal Accents

First, I love metals.  Gold, Silver, copper, brass, bronze, aluminum, colored foils, shiny, sometimes mat or frosted - I love it all.  And I especially love to make my own metal accents for my cards.

The biggest supply of metal that I have is in my refrigerator (no, I'm not talking about melting it down...)... It's my soda cans.  These beautiful aluminum marvels can be converted into the perfect thickness aluminum to be used in art. 

There are many other sources of metal including:

• At your hardware store - aluminum tape - and it's even adhesive on the back
• In your kitchen drawer - aluminum foil
• At the craft store under stained glass and jewelry making (wire and copper tape)

So back to my soda cans: (sorry Pepsi people)

 Look what a nice inside I have!

1. I used my regular large scissors to pierce the side of the can near the top, then cut around the can to remove the top. 
2. I cut vertically down the can's side until I got to the bottom, where I cut around the can again to cut away the bottom. 
3. This metal is very sharp.  Be careful - and you may want to use gloves.

 I used Tim Holtz Tattered Flowers Sizzix die to cut these.  I only cut only sheet at a time but I found you can easily cut two sheets at a time too.

 It's easy to mold these metal flowers with your fingers, a pen, whatever.

 So, what to use to color these pretty flowers?

• Ranger Distress Paints (It looks like old enamel when dry.)
• Ranger Alcohol Inks
• Stamp with Staz On or Archival inks
• If you are into encaustic wax, you can melt colored wax on them.
• Don't color them, emboss them!

 Close Up!

The flowers and leaves are metal. 

1. The leaves have been embossed using a gears embossing folder, then colored using the Ranger Distress Paint.
2. After I coated the leaf, I used a paper towel to wipe off the excess. 
3. You can either use a heat gun to dry the colored metal (again, be careful =- remember you are working with metal - when you heat it, it gets hot.
• OR - you can let the pieces dry overnight. (It doesn't take this long to dry naturally - I just left it overnight because I didnt have any more time that evening.
• I did both and there is no difference. 
4. The color stays in the embossed parts and colors the metal overall.
5. After the flowers were dry, I was able to bend them with abandon!  No chipping or breaking of the paint! Yea!

I used glue dots to adhere the acrylic gems to the flowers and also to adhere the flowers to the card.

 I used a silver foiled cardstock for my banner.

I hope that you try your own cards with metal accents made from soda cans!
Thanks for stopping by!
Lis