Altered Iron

Hi, Everyone,

It’s Technique Tuesday!

Daryl brought in a couple of vintage irons to be used as displays throughout the store last week & asked if I was up to the challenge of altering one. Altering something vintage? Me? Of course I jumped at the chance! I wanted to see whether Embossing Powder would stick to the flat face of the iron. I tried oh so carefully with Embossing Ink and various Embossing Powders but could not get it to heat set onto the iron. Well, I still wanted to alter the iron, but instead of stamping directly onto the metal iron, I stamped onto ordinary packing tissue & used Mod Podge gel medium to glue it to the iron. You can emboss on a variety of surfaces but vintage irons is not one of them. Today we will be embossing on tissue.

This is what I started with.

… and this is what I ended up with.

Embossing Powders on tissue. Let’s begin.

Here I used ordinary packing tissue. Since I was altering an iron, I gathered some sewing stamps then traced the iron on the packing tissue with a pencil.

I stamped 1 image at a time into Embossing Ink , sprinkled Black Glitter Finish Zing Embossing Powder on top, then heat set it with a heat tool. I did this with various images.

. . . and this is what I came up with. By drawing the shape of the iron, it was easy to see where the embossed images would be on the iron.

Next, I took a 1” pastry brush & applied Mod Podge gel medium to the flat iron surface and the edges.

I lined up the pencil marks on the tissue with the iron & patted the tissue onto the surface & around the sides. Be Very careful not to tear the tissue by pressing too hard. It will tear easily when wet. I liked the ripped edges & how it wrapped around the sides.

Then I applied Mod Podge gel medium to glue lace roses onto the handle.

Again I used Mod Podge to glue 3 black snaps onto the edge of the iron & a very old measuring tape draping around the iron handle.

. . . add a photo & some butterflies & there you have it . . . an Altered Iron!
Embossing Powders can be used on a variety of surfaces. Experimenting on tissue is fun & you never know what you might come up with.
 Have fun creating!