Happy Tuesday! This week I am sharing a simple technique for adding color to metal charms.
I love using Tim Holtz's metal Adormentts charms on projects and while I love them as they are right out of the package, I really love them with color applied to them. You can add color to them with several different mediums like paint, pigment inks, alcohol inks, and embossing powders. One of the quickes is with alcohol ink based markers like Copics and Letraset Promarkers. (I have used both for this technique and received the same results. I am demonstraiting the technique with Copics today because that was the brand I had with the colors I wanted to use.)
If I intend to add multiple colors, I like to start with the lightest color, in this case a super light blue (B34 Manganese Blue).
After the first color is dry (less than a minute) I apply the darker accent color in the areas I want it.
When you color over an area, it really removes the color rather than layering over it. Because of that, you can go back and add lighter accent colors as well, like I did here on the chest and beak. The reason I like to go light to dark is because I don't want to junk up my pen nibs too much with the color that is picked up. If you do pick up color, you can simply scribble it off on scrap paper.
If you end up not liking what you have applied, a few swipes of a new color over the old or with a blending pen will remove the unwanted color.
To seal the color onto the charm, I use clear embossing powder. You could heat the charm and apply the powder to the hot metal, but I prefer to use embossing ink. After the marker ink is dry, place the charm on a craft sheet and tap over it with clear embossing ink.
Cover the surface of the charm with clear embossing powder.
Use a heat tool to melt the powder. I like to hold the charm with long handled tweezers while I melt the powder. I feel like it melts faster if I have the charm up and off of my craft sheet. Remember, the charm is metal and gets really hot when heated. Be sure to allow it and the melted embossing powder time to cool before handling it.
To use the charm with a jump ring, you will need to punch a hole in it. For the Idea-ology Adornment charms I can not reccomend enough the Tim Holtz Drill Punch. It makes easy work of punching the metal. I have tried to use the Crop-a-dile and a metal hole punch and neither would work on the hard metal.
One word of caution about your hole placement. . . be sure to place it in an area where you will have plenty of metal left around the hole. If you get it too close to an edge your hole will not be strong and may break through the edge. Obviously, once you cut the hole it is there and can't be re-done so double check your placement before cutting it.
The final step is to add a jump ring to the punched hole to use the piece as a charm. Pieces without a hole can be used as a flat embellishment on a number of different projects.
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