1. When painting on metal, you must begin with a clean, dry surface. Add a bit of "tooth" by sanding lightly with a fine or medium sanding block, especially if your tin already has paint or decoration on it. With a #16 Flat brush, apply metal primer (it will dry clear) and allow it to dry.2. Apply 1-inch pools of wild rose, hydrangea pink, and 14K gold paint to a waxed palette or plate. Dip the 3/4-inch brush into the wild rose and paint over the box. Without cleaning your brush, dip into the hydrangea pink and spread it alongside the previous color, slightly overlapping, and then blend by using a "slip slap" method, painting with a crisscross pattern back and forth over the area. Don't over-blend so that you have one color everywhere; there should be distinctly different areas of color, and the blend should just be where the colors overlap.
3. Without cleaning the brush, add gold randomly around your painted piece. Gold is especially perfect for areas where you aren't happy with the way the paint looks. Gold is a great cure-all! Allow the paint to dry well before embellishing. Tera painted both the inside and outside of my tin.
4. While the paint is drying, create your accordion book. First, decide which direction the book will come out of the tin (accordion or landscape, if your box is a rectangle), and then measure each dimension. Allow at least 1/4-inch on each side so that the book will fit once the embellishments are added. Tera cuts the first piece and then uses the discarded piece as a template for each additional piece. She used three pieces of 8-1/2" x 11" card stock.
5. Fold the first piece by placing it inside the tin (make sure the paint is dry!) and folding it inside so that it fits. You will have a leftover flap on one edge. Fold each piece and then use the leftover flap to glue the pieces together. When you glue, set the pieces together so that the folds are "mountain" and "valley" or that they continue in an accordion going the same direction. Glue with a permanent roll-on adhesive. The final flap will be leftover to glue to the back of the tin to set the book in place.
6. You will need to decorate the inside of your book before you glue it into the tin, because the edge of the tin makes it difficult to work inside. Decorate the pages with rubber stamps, dye ink, and more images; then write with gel and/or metallic pens. Tera's book is actually a letter to her cousin. When working inside a box, remember to think outside the box for its use!
7. For the cover of the tin, lay down gold leafing adhesive with the #12 brush in a random pattern (rinse brushes immediately after use with an adhesive!) and allow it to dry until clear. Apply gold leafing over the adhesive.
8. Add scrapbook elements applied with a glue stick, and then an image from a copyright-free CD. The "A," "R," "T" wood blocks are Scrabble stickers made for scrapbooking. You can also decorate the inside cover of the tin, if you like.
9. When all the artwork is done, spray the tin with a clear varnish to seal the paint and leafing. Houston Art leafing is made with real metal and will tarnish if not sealed. When the varnish is dry, you can glue the book into the back of your tin (make sure it is facing the way you want it to open before gluing) and you have a masterpiece album to display.
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