Step 1
Paint your first layer of red, red-brown, or dark orange on the embellishment. Your paint consistency has to be quite liquidy so that it soaks into the paper or cardstock - I used grungeboard. For this layer I used a combination of Ink and Paint - I mixed the ink in to give it more liquid pigment, so that it would saturate nicely. If you dont want to waste your precious Distress Ink - you can use regular office stamp-pad red. These are like R5-00 a 20ml bottle (about US$ 0.50) and are super saturated. I used Dala Drawing Inks and Dala Suncolour though because I had that on hand. Heat with hair dryer or heat gun to speed up dry time.
Step 2
Using a variety of Distress Paint - I used Salty Ocean, Picked Raspberry, Mowed Lawn and Mustard Seed - dot randomly on craft sheet relatively close to each other. First place embellish face down down in the paint, then drag it around a little. Dry with heat gun. Repeat the process with the excess paint (this is just to give you more layers of colour.) - If the paint has started to dry out on the craft sheet, spritz with water to reactivate. .
Step 3
While the paint is still a little tacky or wet - sprinkle your pearl powder (or in my case mineral mica) ever so slightly over - it helps if you do this with a soft brush. I used a combination of copper, bronze and gold. I think I started with the gold and bronze (which had more brown pigment than red-orange, and then went all over with the red-orange copper. If it is unevenly spread - that is okay, it adds to the effect. Dry that with a heat gun.
Step 4
Once you are satisfied that it is dry enough - randomly sand off some bits. Vary your sanding pressure and sand in random directions. If you have one of those pencil-type sanding tools - those work great because you can sand pretty much exactly where you want to. I got mine from the Manicure/Pedicure section at Dischem for about R20-00 (US$ 2-00).
Step 5
You will start to see that the the colour underneath is starting to be exposed. If your pressure was uneven, in some places you will see a red-brown rim around the "patina" - I like that.
Step 6
You can stop here, or you can do what I did and paint a layer of high gloss Varnish over the top to seal it. If you want it to have extra glossy dimension you can put a layer of Ranger Glossy accents over that. That is what I did.
And there you have it - cool huh?
EDITED TO ADD: 28 MARCH 2013 - Tim Holtz has brought out a line of Metallic Distress Paint - which is really going to take the hassle out of the step with the Mineral Mica.