Why I have this blog or playing with metal tape

I keep a blog for several reasons.
1. To share art with my friends.
2. To teach background techniques.
3. To document what I've done, as much for myself as for others.

Just about every art book you will ever read will tell you that when you experiment, you should keep a journal of the process, the materials, successes and failures. I'm not fond of journals and my handwriting sucks. There are times even I can't read it! So, keeping a blog helps me remember my experiments without having to hand write anything. The photos are also far better than anything I could draw.

To that end, I started playing with metal tape, used in air conditioning and easily found at your local hardware or home repair store. Some comes with numbers on it, other rolls are plain. It mostly depends on the width you want, since it comes in various widths.

I experimented with the metal tape, which I attached to a book cover and some plastic slide mounts (two green and two white). I used the same materials on the metal-tape-covered pieces that I did on the surfaces of the two remaining slide mounts (again, two green and two white). Below are the results:

Beginning at the top left:
Book cover colored with royal purple and pumpkin Staz-on re-inkers, plain plastic green, plain plastic white slide mounts, using the same re-inkers.
Middle row (left to right):
Two slide mounts covered with alcohol inks pre-painted and left over from another project, metal tape covered slide mount colored with purple fluid acrylic, green slide mount also colored with fluid acrylic.
Bottom row (left to right):
Slide mount covered with metal tape and colored with brown shoe polish and white slide mount using the same polish.


Quite a variation in results, even using the same products. I hope you find this experiment as interesting as I did. Click on image for a better view of each result.