Tropical Fish Crafted from Aluminum Cookie Sheet

I have been planning on doing a metal embossing project for a while.  I was planning on going to the hardware store for some metal, from the heating department, but luckily I didn’t have to!  In January, one of my projects was featured on Suzy’s Artsy Crafty Sitcom and that’s how I was lucky enough to find her.  She does metal embossing projects on disposable cookie sheets.  Brilliant!  It’s an inexpensive material, easy to use and easy to find!  You can find an ample supply of them at party stores.

Suzy has wonderful projects in addition to her cookie sheet projects and you should definitely go check her out at www.suzyssitcom.com!  She did faux tin tiles and a beautiful fish!  Thank you Suzy for finding this great alternative material to work with!

Here is the tropical fish I created to hang over Spooky the Cat’s food bowl:

You will need:

–  Disposable cookie sheet
–  Metal primer (spray or brush on)
–  Acrylic paint
–  Tools to emboss – be creative, you don’t have to buy anything.  Use knitting needles, popsicle sticks, ballpoint pens, ends of paint brushes, etc.
–  Glitter
–  White glue
–  Pigment powder and gloss polyurethane finish (optional)
–  Resin – optional – I used Easy Cast
–  Towel
–  Scissors

Here is the video tutorial:
Directions:
1.  Cut off the edges of the baking sheet.  Draw a design you want to emboss onto your metal.  I drew a fish.  I drew it on paper first, so I could get it the way I wanted.
2.  Put a towel on your work surface a put the metal on top of the towel and the drawing on top of the metal.  You can tape the drawing on the metal if you want.
3.  Emboss the metal by tracing the outlines of the fish.  The towel allows for a little give when embossing.
4.  Cut out fish.
5.  On the backside of the fish, begin embossing.  Use various tools to create dimension to the once flat fish.
6.  When you are done embossing, paint the front of the fish with metal primer.  You can use a spray primer as well.  It was too cold here for me to spray paint outside, so I thought I would try and preserve my lungs a bit and used a paint on primer.
7.  When the primer is dry, choose your paints and begin painting the metal.  This will likely require two coats.
8.  When dry, I added glitter to all of the areas where the different paint colors met and around the eye.  I put the white glue where I wanted it and sprinkled with glitter.  I tapped off any excess and returned the unused portion to the container.
9.  Allow to dry.
10.  Since the material is pretty thin, I decided to add a protective coat of resin.  Mix your resin according to the package directions and use a disposable brush to paint on the resin.  Allow to dry for 12 hours and you have a fun fish!!
Thanks for stopping by!  Happy Crafting!
Mona
Here are some of the items I used in this project:

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