Oooooo, shiny!

What a fun take on tangle art*.  The 3D nature of the yarn and the sheen from the aluminum foil really makes these stand out!

Here’s how to go about making your own foil designs!

You will need:

• pieces of posterboard, size 10″x12″ (color doesn’t matter, as you’ll be covering it all in foil)
• yarn that can stretch across your posterboard (again, color doesn’t matter since it will get covered in foil)
• scissors to cut the posterboard and yarn
• glue sticks or liquid glue (liquid glue would be better if your group is small enough to supervise thusly; we used glue sticks for our larger groups)
• pieces of aluminum foil, size 12″x14″
• Sharpies of many colors (use the regular tip Sharpies; the fine tip ones tend to tear the foil)

Decide how you’d like your yarn lines to criss-cross your posterboard, then glue them in place.  Let the yarn hang over the edges of the posterboard.

Once your yarn is glued down, cut the extra yarn from around the edges.

Then, lay a piece of aluminum foil on top.

Gently start smoothing the foil over and around the yarn, so that you start to see the outlines against the smooth posterboard.

Once it’s totally smoothed out, you should have very clear outlines; it will look something like this!

Fold the foil around the edges to keep it in place.

Now you’re ready to color!  You can do some solid-colored sections:

But also try some patterned sections!

And keep coloring until you’re happy with the results!

Check out some that our participants made!

(On the bottom right there you can see that, if you happen to tear the foil, no worries, just tape it back together!  We only had matte tape, but if you’ve got a shinier tape it’ll blend in all the more.)

I love the combination of all of the colors and patterns.  And I love that these are made with materials so many of us already have in our houses!  Send us pictures if you give this one a try.

*Not familiar with tangle art?  Here’s a good Psychology Today article about it.