Recycled Metal Brooch

    Good Morning, I hope you are enjoying the warm weather (at last!)
    This week I'd like to show you a metal brooch made with aluminium cans. One standard size fizzy drink can will give enough metal to make a brooch.
    Wash out your used cans and leave them to dry. Please be VERY careful when cutting the cans open, wear gardening gloves and use old scissors. Once the metal is die cut the edges don't seem to be so sharp, I think the cutting process rounds the edges over slightly.

     This flower has two large petal sets die cut with a Sizzix Bigz die from Tim Holtz called Tattered Florals and one thin petal set, there are also two leaves cut from Tattered Leaves - also a Bigz die,  Bigz dies are heavy duty and will happily cut felt, grey board and thin metal.
    The flowers and leaves have been coloured with Alcohol Inks - Eggplant, Purple Twilight and Pesto. Once coloured the leaves and the wide petals have been embossed with an embossing folder. I would suggest that you use one with an open pattern as detailed ones tend to cut through the metal.

    The whole flower is held together by a flower shaped brad in the centre. Fixing metal can be tricky, not all adhesives will work so a brad is great as it actually goes through all the layers. Die cut a smaller petal set from felt and stitch a brooch back to it, then using red line double sided tape fix this to the back of your brooch. The felt gives you a fixing point for the pin and hides the back of the brad.
    There is a Masterclass in Flower Making this Wednesday (10th July) at J&C Creations, 10.00am - 12.30pm, so if you can pop along you will learn all manner of flower making tips.
    If you don't have Alcohol Inks you might like to try Promarkers to colour your metal, you could even stamp a design on the metal and then colour it in.

Have fun experimenting.

*Rocky*