These particular roses aren't tedious. In fact they were quite easy. The way I had been making roses involves 6 heart-shaped pieces; not 2. It's a little trickier. I just LOVE making soda can flowers. I've made many different kinds & enjoy trying out new ones, too. I've got a box of flowers sitting here that need to be put outside. I'll get to it one of these days. Soda cans are very easy to cut with scissors. I have gloves, but don't seem to need them. On the other hand, I've used aluminum flashing for some projects. You can cut flashing with scissors, but the edges are SHARP. You definitely need gloves when working with flashing. Check out some of my flowers in my photobucket album. I'll be posting more flowers soon. Here is a link that might be useful: Photobucket garden junk

Those are awesome! Love the red white and blue!!! Ya, I'm Canadian...but I can like red white and blue!!! We are kinda too plain Jane with just red and white.....lol!

Nothing new. As others pointed out, washing soda, sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), is very different from baking soda, sodium bicorbonate (NaHCO3), and the difference has to do with the buffering properties of the different ions. In solution, carbonate (CO3--) will be in equilibrium with bicarbonate (HCO3-) and carbonic acid (H2CO3), which itself is in equilibrium with CO2 and H20, the proportions depending on and determining pH. Adding bicarbonate tends to stabilize pH to a slightly basic range. Adding carbonate ions in the form of sodium carbonate may raise pH too high for the average pond. The stuff is also much less safe to work with and have lying around than the bicarb. As to why you would want to bring up the pH with baking soda, it can be beneficial for a number of reasons. Organic processes tend to acidify the water, so adding an alkaline buffer is often a good idea. Ammonia is an interesting situation. It is more toxic at higher pH, but will gas out much more readily. Overall, lower pH promotes the accumulation of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, which is something we generally want to avoid in a pond with fish. This will of course depend on the situation. Some tropical fish are very sodium-sensitive, but they also tend to like a lower pH, so baking soda would be undesirable. Goldfish and koi, on the other hand, prefer a slightly basic pH and are quite sodium-tolerant. In fact they can thrive in slightly to moderately brackish water. You always have to be careful and know what you're doing. There is a lot of good info in this forum. My prefered method is to add lime, dolomitic lime, and calcium carbonate materials like shells or coral to the pond for long-term buffering, and add a little baking soda (~ 1 tsp/ 5 gallons) to new water when I'm doing changes. This way I'm in no danger of adding too much sodium, since I also have pond plants and use the old water in the vegetable garden.

I just called the Church & Dwight phone # above and spoke to a very nice lady and ordered 3 boxes of washing soda. She said it had been pulled from most stores because it was such competition for laundry detergents, which made me want to try it all the more. No store in my area carries it any longer. If you call, you may have to wait for several minutes as I did, however, it takes only a few minutes to order after connecting with them. They waive shipping fees of $6.00+ for 2 or more boxes and the cost is now $4.50 per box.