More Steampunk!

It was a happy day for me when I discovered Left Of Center Challenges.  It's a young blog, started in February this year,  dedicated to all sorts of stuff that I love SO much  - Steampunk, Goth, Halloween (year-round), dark, spooky, creepy, anime, edgy, mythical (fairy tale,  mermaids, dragons, fairy, literary characters, fan art),  and horror, as well as regular mainstream crafters.  The latest challenge is to include a sentiment, and here's my contribution.

I'm off work on leave just now, which means I can watch Create & Craft in the day, and last week Ali Reeve (Clever Crafter) was on demonstrating all sorts of wonderful things to do with That Special Touch masks. I have a fair collection of these and some of the things Ali was doing made me go " I'm going to try that!" 

One of the techniques involved using a mask in a letterpress technique, then blending DI's over the piece and brushing on mica powders - that's how I made the background image, and I have a feeling I'll be repeating the technique.  (rub ink over the mask , then run through your die cutting machine with the mask, ink up,  on your lower plate, then the paper face down, then squidgy mat and embossing plate.  Yes, I got it wrong a couple of times.  D'oh!) Once I'd got my background I had to think what to do with it (one day I will plan a project from start to finish, I promise...today is not the day, though).

I stamped the sentiment (one created with my Imagepac kit) onto Safmat  (stamping direct onto the embossed background would have been difficult)  and applied it to the background.  I die cut the piece, using the "out of bounds" technique and a Go Kreate die. 

I embossed a shaped card (again with a Special Touch mask), coloured with blended DI's and glued on the background.  I had a good rummage in my box of bits and found some gears and foliage that I'd die cut and coloured with Gilder's Paste for another project but hadn't used.  They went onto the card, tastefully arranged (!).  At that point I stepped away from the card...

Thanks for visiting - you're welcome back at any time.

Crafty Hugs,

Keren

Up the Steamstalk!

Hi everyone, thank you for visiting.  Today I am sharing my contribution for SanDee and Amelie's Steampunk challenge, which this month is Fairy Tales into a Steampunk world.  So, without further ado, I present - the Steampunk Beanstalk! 

 

The background was coloured using the same technique as  for Tim Holtz's April tag, so I won't go into details - Tim's done it much better than I ever could, after all.  The rest of it is just die-cuts (Docrafts gears and Spellbinders foliage) and card coloured with Gilder's paste.

Feel the Love - 2

After making a fancy box to contain my husband's Valentine gift, (see part one if you haven't already)  I went on to make the card.  The card which will go in the box (on top of a little gift!) was next - I folded a square Kraft card blank and positioned a heart shaped die (one of the Sizzix Framelits Heart 1 nesting dies) carefully so that it just missed cutting the fold.   I stamped the front with a Rose background stamp in Brilliance ink - it didn't show up as well as I would have liked, so I brushed over it with gold Perfect Pearls and misted with water to set the powder.  I shaded the edges with Vintage Photo Distress inks.  The effect is subtle and doesn't show up well in the picture - it's more obvious in real life, as is the "I Love You"sentiment stamped in brown Memento ink.  

I'd made three roses (see here for the method I followed) that I was going to put on the lid of the box but changed my mind.  One of them went on the front of the card with a couple of the small metal leaves from Creative Expression.  The rose and the leaves got a coat of Gilder's Paste.  Gilder's Paste is fantastic stuff, it looks and smells like shoe polish, is non-toxic,dries in about 20 minutes (is touch-dry in next to no time) and goes onto almost anything!

  

And that's it done.  I'm sharing it on the Artistic Stamper Blog Challenge for February.  Hope you liked it!  Thanks for visiting - please come back soon!

Feel the Love - 1

I admit it, I'm a big softy when it comes to Valentine's Day. Yes, even after years of marriage.   The second time around, too.  In my head I'm still 18 and as romatic as ever.  So I like to make a bit of an effort with The Love Of My Life's Valentine and as there are a number of Valentine/romance/hearts and flowers related challenges going on right now, well...

Having said I'm a big softy, I don't like giving TLOML something that is too sweety-sweety.  In the past I've done mini-albums, minimalist white-on-white, a CD slideshow - all sorts of things.  This year I've gone Steampunk (we both love the style - just as well really!)

I began with a papier-mache box (one of a nested set of three.  This is the middle-sized one) and covered it with aluminium insulating tape (I got some 50 mm wide from the DIY store, and I also got some 100 mm wide from Ebay).  I followed the technique demonstrated by Tim Holtz here. 

I die cut some gears (from the Chronology range by Docrafts) and the letters (Sizzix Bigz XL - Word Play) rubbed on Gilder's Paste in shades of gold, silver and bronze and antiqued them all with a very dilute wash of black acrylic paint.  When they were dry, I stuck them all to the lid of the box.

That's part one done and dusted - now I just have to make the card to go inside.  But before I go on to make the card, I'm going to enter this in the Anything But A Card blog challenge nd the Hostshot Craft Blog Challenge.

 

See you in Part 2!

Ink free stamping

Hi folks,thanks for visiting my blog. I've had quite a week and I've a fairly hectic few weeks coming up so my crafting time is precious right at the moment.   I mentioned to a colleague that my crafting was the only thing keeping me sane.  "Do more of it!" she said - how rude!

 Today's offering began as a response to Simon Says Stamp & Show blog challenge - ink free stamping. I've had this Papermania mini-album hanging about the place for a while waiting for inspiration to strike so I decided that the time was ripe to make some use of it.

I covered the page with white cotton fabric then went to work with Distress Inks in shades of blue (applying them from the pad with sponge applicators) and once they were all covered, sprayed some Radiant Rain in blues and purples (plus a touch of pewter to grunge it all up) added a fine mist of water to get it to blend together, and left it to dry.  It was so pretty it was a shame to cover it up, but I spoke firmly to myself and added the netting.   The netting is recycled from my Dead Man's Chest project - it was gold to begin with but a dip in some diluted brown acrylic paint sorted that out.

I covered the lower right of the shape with gold Ferro paint in a nice thick layer, sprayed my stamp (a foam one designed for stamping home decor projects) with water and stamped it into the Ferro.  Result!  The opposite corner was looking a bit bare so I covered that with Croco paints in turquoise, bronze and gold.

I don't know about you, but I love peacock feathers and the colours of the album page were reminding me so much of them...so I had to include one.  The peacock is the bird associated with the goddess Juno (Hera), queen of the gods of Olympus, and this gave me the title for my page.  I printed out the word "Goddess", aged the paper with some Vintage Photo and Pumice Stone DI's and put it behind the Tim Holtz ornate plate, which I'd coated with Celtic Bronze gilder's paste and a touch of Patina paste.  While I had the gilder's paste handy, I gave the edges of the page a touch of both colours.  Finally, I put an acrylic AB gem at the base of the feather to neaten it up.

I'm thinking that I may theme each page inside the album for different goddesses - what do you think?

Ironmongery with Ambition

Hi folks, thanks for coming by.  I really appreciate your visits and I hope you enjoy reading my ramblings and looking at my efforts.  Today I'm featuring my entry for DragonsDream Tag-It-On challenge, theme - Self-Propelled Flowers.

“Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls .  One of my favourite sci-fi authors, and one of my favourite books of his.  In some of his books, Heinlein wrote about self-aware machines - computer "brains" that became so complex that they "woke up".

So here's my "butterfly" - some ornamental ironmongery that woke up and wanted to transform into something different.

 

The roses I painted with texture medium and then painted grey for a stone effect.  The die-cut corner pieces (dies from Marianne) have been given a coat of gilder's paste, as has the little body piece.  The tag had various shades of blue and green DI's (Broken China, Weathered Wood, Spruce and Evergreen) blended over it and the little butterflies (from Lavinia) were stamped in Stormy Sky.  The sentiment is one I made with my Imagepac and is stamped in Cobalt Archival ink.

 

And there we are, sidling in just as they shut the doors again.  I hope you like it, and you'll call again soon.  Bye for now!

 



Nautical but Nice!

I live beside the sea - from my living room window I can see the Bristol Channel, a few hundred yards away.  The last part of my journey home from work parallells the beach, and I always feel refreshed ti see it.  So perhaps it isn't surprising that the seaside is an influence in my crafting.

This is the frame that was on my desk on Wednesday,  given a coat of gilder's paste in Rich Gold, some Timeworn aging and some more gilder's paste in Patina.

 

I filled each "porthole" with a piece of Core'dinations whitewash card, embossed with a swirly folder and lightly sanded back.  The embellishments are moulded out of paper clay and were part of my final assemblage item for the Timeworn Techniques course.  They have been painted in acrylic paint to get a faux ivory appearance (you'll have to sign up for the course to find out how - I'm not going to reveal Andy Skinner's secrets!).  The idea of using Pledge Multi-Surface Wax (formerly known as Klear polish) as a sealer/polish on the embellies is entirely my own, though, so I can share it with you.  It gives a lovely soft sheen, I just love it.

 

I'm so enjoying my few days leave, relaxing and catching up on my crafting.  I do hope you enjoyed visiting my blog - thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!

Happy Accidents!

The recipe for Dragons Dreams TIO challenge this time out is -

• handmade background,
• interesting character(s),
• quirky twist.

Here's my interpretation!

This did not start out with the recipe in mind.  In fact, it began as a way of using up some of my, er, "happy accidents".  As you know, Crafters Never Waste Anything.  We are Nature's Recyclers.  And when I managed to get glue on the front of the tag I'd been preparing for another challenge, I didn't throw it away (it was a Inkssentials Kraft tag, after all!)  As I'd started with a background stamp of clock faces, I continued the theme with the sentiment and stamped some more clocks onto the tag.

I'd cut the dress form for another project, but then I'd changed my mind about using it, so after giving it a good rub with some Gilder's Paste (it's much more metallic in real life than the picture shows) I decided to throw that onto the tag.  The chain was also a left-over and I'd made three bronze-gilded flowers for another tag and only used one, so that went on as well.  The wings were in The Box (you know The Box - it's where you keep all the bits that might come in handy.  Mine needs to be the Tardis, though...)  I put them on as well- you know how TIme Flies!

My bag of goodies from Crafty-Emblies included some pocket watches that were just the right size to make the character's face (watch-face - geddit?)  so after a bit of surgery to remove the loop at the top and a quick rub-over with a bit of Gilder's Paste, there it was, job done, and mostly by accident.

Hope you like it! 

Caught in Crystal

The recipe for the latest Artful Times blog challenge (sponsored by Oyster Stamps) is to make something using acetate.  I use acetate quite a bit, but usually to "float" things like butterflies over an image, so it took a fair bit of thinking before I remembered the "caught in crystal" technique.

 

I love the "caught in crystal" technique and have done ever since I saw it in Craft Stamper some years ago. (Sheena Douglass has a tutorial on YouTube here) If you haven't come across it before, a clear-drying medium is spread onto acetate and clear colour and inclusions (e.g. glitter) are added to the medium, then tissue paper is spread over the back of it and the whole shebang is left to dry.  I like to use clear floor polish (Pledge Multi-surface wax - used to be known as Klear) and I keep the pacakaging from the likes of Nestabilities as they have a nice rim which stops the fluid from going everywhere you don't want it to go.

For this piece, I used red and pink drawing inks (the gold backing card makes it look orange).  I also sprayed the acetate with some gold Spray and Sparkle. I attached the acetate to some gold card with the floor polish (it takes a while to dry, but works pretty well and is transparent once dry) and then decorated it with one of my favourite paper flowers and wings moulded from friendly plastic. 

I added the heart, cut out of velvet paper which I'd coloured with my Spectrum Noir pens, and some gold glitter peel-offs to just finish off the topper.  The card was originally white - some Tea Dye DI sorted that out as it was just too stark.

And there you have it.  Hope you enjoyed your visit- you'll be welcome back anytime!

Steampunk Sprockets

If you've glanced at my blog before you've probably noticed that I really, really like Steampunk.  So this week's theme for the Sunday Stampers challenge is right up my street! 

My order from Crafty-Emblies (who are sponsoring this challenge) arrived earlier this week but is still at the stage of "Can't be used, has to be taken out and stroked instead" (My precious!) although I did experiment with a bit of gilder's paste on one of the sprockets (and I am pleased to say that the experiment was successful!) so I fell back on my faithful die cuts and my new favourite Gilder's Paste. 

For once I used the Spellbinders Sprightly Sprockets instead of the Alterations Gadget Gears as I wanted a lighter, less industrial effect.  The corners are from Marianne and the flower is made with the Donna Salazar build-a-rose set.  Everything was covered in Gilder's Paste.

For the background, I cut a stencil out of Doeflex with my Cameo and sprayed Sprinkies ink through it, then proceeded to cover it all up in different shades of Distress.  The words "Gears" and "Steampunk" are my own design (made with the Imagepac system) and the pointing hand is by Tim Holtz. 

Thanks for stopping by - I hope you enjoyed your visit!