How to Find Tin Stamped Christmas Ornament Designs

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Marie French from Expert Village. We are going to go in to patterns at this point. Patterns can be found anywhere. Look at nature. Patterns are available in nature everywhere. They are also available in your furnishings, in books, in magazines. So when you are looking for patterns, just kind of take a minute to feel what you are trying to portray. Let's say in your ornament because that is what we are going to work on today. Or in any piece or design that you are working on. One is, let's say I have this wonderful pillow and the pattern I see here could be beautifully worked in tin, so this is an idea for a pattern. Again, I have a beautiful book, "Tinwork". You can look on the internet, you can look at your local book store, you can look at Amazon for patterns or books on tin punching. Here they have different swirls and stars, here is a tin punch star that we could copy, could be good. So there's ideas here, I mean even on the front of this Elle Decor magazine we have great patterns that are taken from old blocks. I use my old Indian wood printing blocks to use pattern, and again leafing through a magazine will all give you pattern. I'd like to add intuitive design. Sometimes you can just take a look at the circle and just let any kind of design come out, and most great design is done this way. Copying patterns and copying different things from nature has it's place but lets get intuitive and add on to this. Here let's say I want to make the focal point a relief stamp so I will take the circle and square it up in to the middle of the design, take my relief stamp, again line it up and here I will just hammer in and this will be my focal point of the design and I am hammering. As I get closer to the center because as I start with this relief design, I have to go small hits to get the relief and then I can punch it harder as I go further down into the design. So now I have my center focal point and I am just going to intuitively grab different stamps to make the rest of my design. So let's say here I have small lines, I am just going to add them randomly around the piece. So here I am just kind of taking them around the circle and I am just going to add in different design elements just by radiating out and its just totally intuitive. I am just letting it sort of talk to me at this point. Now we are going to add, here I have a diamond stamp and I will work with this into the center. Then here I have a small radiating star and that will go closer to the radiating stamp that I have in the center. So you can see as you go around, you are adding design just intuitively. "