Metal Craft Discovery Workshop: Create Unique Jewelry, Art Dolls, Collage Art, Keepsakes and More!

Lots of great ideas and tips. A wonderful book for any artist seeking to expand their skills. This book will stay on my desk to refer to time and again. The step by step how to's alone make it well worth the price. I have now added an aviation snips to my tool chest and have cut up every tin in sight. Get it! You will love it!

I'm a mixed media collage artist, which very regularly implements metal into my design, this book is amazing! It shows different transfer techniques as well as giving your metal a patina (either with ammonia or patina kits that can be purchased at Michaels). It has some great inspirational pieces. I'm also a fan of product lists (instead of vague references), which this book has in spades. It will flat out tell you what product works best. A++++

It's finally here: a book by Linda and Opie O'Brien. If you ever wanted to work with tin, or metal and wondered how, this is the book for you. Linda and Opie O'Brien take you through each and every step, clearly, precisely and flawlessly enabling you to reproduce anything in the book. It is unlikely that any other two artists are as generous and forthcoming as the O'Briens as they work their magic and share it fully. I have had the privilege to take several classes with Linda and Obie, and it was as if I was in the same room with them as I walked from one project to another hearing their voices as they alternate between the art of using a punch or rivet gun, and then switch gracefully into demonstrating the mysteries of image transfers. Take any one of the projects in this book and follow the instructions and you will realize quickly, easily and with great pleasure how terrific it is to work with metal. One or two projects in this book will make you feel as if you are a metal crafter. Why? Opie and Linda step you through each project with such clarity and with a love of what they create. Until I took a class with the O'Briens I thought metalwork would be difficult, but wonderful. After a class, and now with their book in hand, I am sure to search out all those tins, and metal I might have otherwise passed by. I've already started my search! I rank this book, part of a discovery workshop series, among the best and a must have.

What a plethora of projects for the beginner or advanced artist who would like to work with metal. Plenty of projects to choose from, lots of different techniques to try, fabulous tips, explicit step-by-instructions, and so much more. You'll refer back to this book over and over again. I really appreciated the unique and clever cold fusion techniques as I am not a big fan of soldering, and sometimes gluing metal pieces together ends up in metal pieces falling apart. Buy this book, and then raid your husband's tool chest!

I had very high expectations when I heard that Linda and Opie O'Brien were going to write a book on their metal crafting techniques. After providing Art Doll Quarterly with a fantastic metal doll project, as the editor I knew they were ready to write a book and encouraged them to do so. Is anyone more creative or more talented than Linda and Opie? I very much doubt it! They're amazing. Their first book is truly exceptional; it might have also been titled "Approachable Metal Crafting" because it offers so much valuable information on how a newbie like me can get into the metal arts without taking hundreds of workshops and spending thousands of dollars on tools and materials. The "Basic Metal Techniques" section is quite lengthy and thorough, detailing everything from cutting metal pieces and deconstructing tin cans for art materials to making cold joins, etching, image transfers, and much more. The projects are sensational. You'll learn how to make a tin-can art doll, a bottle-cap frame, a metal clock with a music box inside, a "purse" made by altering a metal lunchbox, shrines, assemblage art, lots of metal jewelry, and funky items for home decor. I'm in love with this book! Very highly recommended by Sharilyn Miller, author of Bead on a Wire.