We all seem to love rust.

Our image CD, “In Rust We Trust” is a best seller, and the Now What? projects we have done that incorporated rust were big favorites (see the cover articles on Volume 5 and Volume 7 in the Now What Archives).

How would you like to have a never- ending supply of rusted shapes to use in your artwork - and not just stars and hearts - but any shape you want?

And what if you could cut them with scissors, but they could not cut you back?

And what if they were flexible too? And waterproof. And indestructible. Sound interesting? It is.
What You Will Need:
Sheer Heaven
Instant Iron and Instant Rust by Modern Options
Paint Brush (large mop type but not your best)
Water
Shapes (We used shapes from the new Petroglyph Clip Art Collection from Cre8it)

About the Shapes:
You can use any computer clip art or shapes that you can scan and print onto Sheer Heaven. But be careful about scanning rubber stamp images unless the company allows it. All our stamps (Cre8it) are ok for scanning. printing, and copying, but many other companies have Angel Policies that are not so angelic when it comes to using the computer and printer.

You can also trace or draw or rubber stamp directly onto the “right” side of the Sheer Heaven. The artwork should be dark so it will still be visible when the rusted surface is applied behind - on the back side of the SH. Any letter shapes should be reversed because the rusted side will be the right side when we are done.

The combination of Instant Iron and Instant Rust creates a true rusted veneer on any non-porous surface. This is not a rust “look”, it is real rusted iron.

Bottles come in a variety of sizes and are available at craft and art supply stores everywhere.

Once Instant Iron is opened, it has a pretty short shelf life, so we recommend buying smaller bottles more often, rather than a large bottle to last a long time. That way, you get it used up before it dries hard in the bottle. We pour what we will use into a small jar and close the bottle back up immediately, so very little air gets inside.
Instant Iron can be painted onto any surface, but it requires a non-porous surface to get the rust to work. The Instant Rust has to sit in the iron coating - which is very porous itself - in order to accomplish the desired corrosion. If the iron is painted onto something porous - like paper or fabric for example, the instant rust will soak right on through the metal and into the paper without time to corrode.

Because Sheer Heaven is not porous on the back side, it makes the perfect surface on which to create indestructible rusted objects that are as flat and as flexible as paper.
Step 1.
To begin making the “Running Horses” card shown above, we arranged several copies of the Running Horse clip art image on a single letter size page in PhotoShop Elements. To avoid wasting precious space, we enlarged and copied the Spiral Sun so we could make extra shapes for future projects.

The images are printed on the “right” side of the Sheer Heaven in “mirrored” format. We want our final horses running to the right.

If you are not sure how to set up this kind of page in PhotoShop, the instructions are included on the Petroglyph Clip Art CD.