When Rust Turns To Colour by Lesley

As you may have noticed, i have a love for all things rusty. The colours, the texture, the corroding of metal........i love it all.

Normally when i create a piece of work, i use paint to give a rusty effect. This week i have actually used a huge chunk of rusty metal as my base. It was tempting to not actually do anything to it, the colours are that gorgeous!

This is not the actual chunk i used (i forgot to photo it before attacking it with paint) but the colours are exactly the same. I have lots of these size pieces, they came from the remnants of an old boat down the harbour near where i live.

To begin with i decided what craft parts i was going to use and laid them out where i wanted them on the rust, adding some metal bits from my stash. These craft parts are fab. So may bits on one one sheet, an absolute bargain too! I took a photo of them, then painted them all black and put them to one side.

Using Decoart Media sprays in white and red.........i started adding some colour to the metal. This is where i messed up and didn't thoroughly dry the red before adding the white. I ended up with a pinkish colour........which is so not me!!

I glued the craft parts onto the metal following the picture i had taken prior. Then i started to add more color in layers using spray inks and paint.

I like doing pieces like this.........but struggle to know when to stop adding colour! I finished by adding some brass wax cream to the craft parts and flicked some black acrylic paint over the top
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When working with bits of rust like this, i do tend to treat the entire piece with flat matt varnish after. A good couple of very liberal coats. Rust does have a tendency to shed dust and bits everywhere!

Ingredients used.

Pipework maze