Halloween Altered Tin

Project Description

Welcome to the Creative Paperclay® blog hop!! We’ve teamed with Gina’s Designs Lasercuts to bring you some spook-tacular creations. You’re at Carole Lassak’s Create N Craft blog, and I’ve altered a sardine tin to make a Halloween decor piece.

The first step was to spray paint the tin. I used a dull gold tone, textured paint to give the piece an aged and weathered look.

Next, I gave all the Gina’s Designs chipboard pieces a coat of gesso, then painted and decorated them. I added beads for the bat’s eyes, and covered the Boo! with orange mica.


Unpainted chipboard

Painted chipboard shapes

While those were drying, I started to form the clay pieces. For the background, I rolled out a ball of clay to about 1/8″ thickness, and pressed a stencil into the clay using a rolling pin. After this piece dried, I was able to cut it with scissors to the size I needed. I painted it with a black-green acrylic paint, which I brushed on, then immediately wiped off to get the appropriate shading.

The fence was constructed of thin, rectangular pieces of clay, and painted a shiny, metallic gun metal grey. The little pumpkins were balls of clay that were scored to resemble the sections of a pumpkin. I used a silicone mold for the leaves, and extruded long, thin strands for the vines.

Leaf molds

Extruded vines

When all the paint was dry, I began to assemble the altered tin. First, I drilled a hole in the bottom of the tin to accommodate the flame of a battery tea light candle.

The bats float above the scene on brass springs, and are help in place with jewelry clay.

The witch was was adhered to the background clay piece with pop dots to create a shadow, and give it the illusion of flying through the trees.

Here are close-ups of the fence and pumpkins and the leaves and vines.



I mounted the completed altered tin in a stemmed candle holder.

Carole