Last year I took a metals class at the local university, with the idea that I was going to learn how to make my own clasps. I accomplished neither that goal, nor finishing the one project the prof really liked, rendering us both rather dissatisfied with my performance, if for differing reasons. But one of the other students is really interested in hollow forms and repousse, so I did some stuff with the latter, particularly.

Altered mejiers mint tin (standard size of roughly 2-1/2 x3x 3/4”). The leaf is probably made of some bronze weather stripping scavenged from our old house. Repoussed, rivetted. 1st half of 2008 (I think...)

I never got around to ordering any tools after the class, but Page was kind enough to loan me her brand new, never-before-used pitch bowl, beautifully filled with shiny black pitch. Asa had learnt in one of his seminars that heat guns, as opposed to weed-burner torches, were the ideal thing for melting pitch, and as it happens we own a heat gun (purchased, as I recall, to melt some honest to goodness pitch some prior owner or t'other left on our living room floor—it worked like a charm to remove it.)

So now I was all set to start repousse-ing again. I sanded off the rather ugly advertising, attempting for a sort-of-interesting pattern of paint removal, leaving the embossed mint leaves uncovered by my design; the stamped motifs dictated my choice of subject for my first project, and I picked one of the many, many, many catmint leaves to serve as a model. (When we had cats, I had little luck growing catmint. Now they're gone, and I have huge bushes of the stuff, which I mostly ripped out this fall. Tastes nasty, though the bees surely love the flowers.)

My mint leaf isn't real exciting, and my rivets—some brass and at least one copper—won't win any prizes. But I started using the box as a bead container, and am quite enjoying my little foray into altered tins.

photo 20081014, post 19oct08.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.