Continued experimentation with aluninum tape

I am loving playing with aluminum duct/auto tape and my embossing folders, ever since the new year and making those first few tags.  Here are a few more things I have made since then, using the tape, and embossing them with my Cuttlebug.

  

This is a simple unfinished wood box from Micheals.  I removed the strap and button.  I embossed the tape, and adhered it to the centre of the box top, front and back.  I punctured holes through the tape and added the strap and button back on.  Then I covered the rest of the box with textured Japanese paper.  A simple little treat box.  I love the silver and pink together.

Again, more silver and pink.  Odd, I am not a big fan of pink - but silver and pink do look nice together.  This is an Altoid tin I had.  I taped the aluminum to the cardstock and embossed the flowers on, then sponged some acrylic paint over it to add some colour.  I used more tape and taped the floral piece to both the top and the bottom and buffed it down to adhere tightly.  I opened up the box and balanced it on scrap paper to level both surfaces, as much as I can.  I then mixed clear resin and poured it over each surface to seal.  Unfortunately, my leveling was not as level as I hoped and I overestimated how much resin I mixed so there was some overflow.  It was not as neat as I wanted.  But when the resin cured fully, the top and bottom were glass smooth and it gave a lovely finish.  Next time, I may play with my technique some more and make tape walls or something to hold the resin in better - or just not use so much.

I was playing with the tape still, so surfaced the inside of the tin too.

Stamping kit by Martha Stewart - review

I saw this kit recently at Michaels and used one of their customer coupons to get it for myself.  The concept behind it was sound - it had several stamp mounts and letter stamps in 3 different sizes so that you can make your own custom message stamps or monograms.  It comes with two circular mounts with two patterned circle stamps, and in the middle you can either make a monogram with the large fancy font, or a small message with the smallest font.  There is two rectangular mounts for messages.  It comes with tweezers, and a little instruction booklet.  There are multiples of the letters in each font, as well as some numbers and symbols, and they come connected in sheets that you can gently pull apart or use use sharp scissors.  They are not flat mounts like the clear stamps you see, but have little rubber protrusions in the back that stick into crevices in the mounts.  Not a bad idea for keeping things in a straight line.

Picture of the packaged goods

In theory, this is a good product - instead of buying hundreds of different stamps with messages for all occasions, or painstakingly making your own, this can be used to make individual messages each time you need it.  Not to mention the space you are saving!

My package after removing from the box and used for the first time

I first tried the circular mounts with one of the frame stamps.  It seemed to fit onto the mount well enough, but really, it was not an even or flush fit, so if you wanted to have an even stamping, you would have to wiggle it a bit.  Not too much a hassle I guess.  But there is the potential of either an uneven stamping or smearing.  Then I pulled out the smallest font to put a message in the centre of the stamp.  They came in one sheet that you could pull apart.  They were quite tiny, and I guess the tweezers were to hold and set them into the mount.  Nope.  Tweezers were a bit useless - the stamps were too small to hold well with them, and be able to mount them securely.  I was able to use my finger and set them in.  Big problem though.  I noticed that when the circle mount had both the frame stamp and the letter stamps in, that there was a bit of difference in height of the two - that just does not make sense!  I have yet to try a monogram - but to make a circle frame, and have a small message in the middle with the smallest font, I had to do separate stampings of each.

One of my first stampings with the kit

Then I made the above tab for a card with the medium font - it sits nicely in the rectangular mount.  You have to use the pad of your finger to push down and sit things nicely back in the mount.  Sometimes a wee bit sticks up, which is probably how I got those two stray marks at the top of the card there.  Cleaning was not fun either.  Baby wipes were used to clean off the ink, and it worked great with the circular frame, but the letters are very small and not very firmly held in the mounts.  If you are not careful, you can send the little letters flying out into the air with some scrubbing pressure.  Washing them in the sink is definitely out - they would go down the drain.  Maybe that explains why one package I saw at the store had no letter stamps - someone probably shoplifted them to replace the ones they lost.
So ultimately:
Pros - great for making short personalized stamped messages in different sizes
Cons - easy to lose the small letter stamps (wish it came with small holders for each size), not easy to clean because of their size and ease of loss, tweezers useless, wish the circular stamp could stamp with both the circle frame and letters

It was not as great of a product as I hoped unfortunately, though it is certainly something I will have a use for in the future.  After all, it's bought and paid for.