Perfect Rust

Remember that bag of nails I scored at Habitat Restore?

Got me some Economy Cloth and drew a square.  A bit off center, because, I am not always not middle of the road.

Added some nails to the square

This is the jumble of nails 

Yeah, I used my pyrex casserole dish.  A metal pan would have rusted, right?  And I wanted only the nail marks.  So don't tell Frank, OK.

It took two days for the nails to rust.  And they didn't do it well, I was kinda disappointed.  

I changed my mind when I rinsed out the fabric with saline.  The corners were stiff and I spent a lot of time scrubbing the edges.


It dried beautifully.  I like the controlled rusting.  Now I want to go to some resale shops and see if I can find some rusty tools.  I wish I knew someone who had a machine shop, now that would be cool.  Or a shipyard....oh yeah.  Rusty ship stuff.

Yes, my husband represents several machine shops but I have never been able to get him to haul rusty compressor parts home......

I am linking this up with Nina Marie at her Creations blog Off the Wall Fridays.  This is certainly off the wall rusting!  She talks about Nancy Zeiman and others link up to show their stuff.

Art Haul at Habitat ReStore

NOTE:  I am linking up with  Free motion by the River

 We have two Habitat ReStore locations here in Baton Rouge.  I love them both.  We bought a lot of stuff from there when we were flipping the houses.

They have an Art Auction every spring.  Jennifer issues $25 gift certificates to anyone who wants to participate.  You shop in the stores and create art with some things you buy.

The art then gets donated to the Art Auction and sold to build houses.

So I went shopping.  I had $25 burning  hole in my pocket.

Frank was the one who saw this fabulous frame.  It looks oriental, right?  Perfect for my Japanese Tea Bag piece.  I will decide whether it will go into the auction or I will keep it, later.  I want it, but it is perfect for the auction.

It was $3




Now, this is what I wanted to do last year, but was involved with the flood aftermath.  This year the perfect chair presented itself.  For $5 no less!

No, this is not hashish.  It is a bag of rusty nails!

Only I would want rusty nails, right?  Buck fifty for the three pounds of nails.  Got big plans for these guys.

 This is a copper thing.  No idea what they used them for, but I can see the copper becoming a mordant with rusty stuff and creating great circle stains on fabric.  Yes!

Now I have so many ideas!





And I found a Reindeer bib for Sawyer, or someone who dribbles.

I also got 3 packages of paint brushes, two nice paintbrushes and a pack of foam brushes.  Can you guess what the total for all this was?

I got 15% off for being over 55 and the whole bill was $16.58!

I could have gotten the chandelier I was lusting after!

Here is the rusting I did yesterday.  I used some smaller pieces and actually rusted it twice because the first one was not heavily marked.  This is not great but it is better.

I did see that I can do a leaf printing in the center and maybe double the impact for both rusting and leaf printing!

I am excited to get started on some ideas for the  Art Auction pieces.  I wonder how much they raise each year.  Let me see if I can find out.