Etched Brass Tag and my day

Today is my 39th birthday. Its been such a wonderful day! My dear friend Neilsie took me for Thai food and gave me a wonderful gift! It made my day, along with the many sweet comments from my facebook friends.
I have been on a mission today. Gathering supplies to etch metal. I wanted to make sure I did it right and safely as well.
So this morning I have been running around gathering up my supplies. I admit I was really nervous as it uses chemicals I have really not worked with.
I used a mixture of Muriatic Acid (think pool cleaner-its potent stuff!) and hydrogen peroxide. I tried it with 3 different types of small metal tags. Brass , Copper and what I thought was Aluminum. Man, that solution was boiling and HOT!


This solution is so toxic I looked like such a nerd with my safety glasses, mask and long gloves! LOL It disentegrated the (what I thought was) aluminum tag. The Copper one didn't come out the way I wanted so not showing that one. But I am THRILLED with the brass piece. I stamped an image (Stampinback's Basic Elements sheet-LOVE it!) onto the brass in Stazon ink and put it in the solution for several minutes. I have a sheet of brass so I just cut out a tag, rounded the corners with my round-it-all and punched out a couple holes with the cropadile big bite.


I have plans to use this in a jewelry piece in the future. I am getting into making jewelry and working with some wire-I always love learning something new. Lots of things running through my head now with this etched metal. Oh my!