It's that time again!

Yes it's time for a male friend's birthday!   I know he likes antiques (being one like me - lol!)  - so for this card I used Sheena's Die and Stamps.    Most of the items were cut from black cardstock, and mainly coloured with various gold and silver pebeo gilding waxes.  The hour glass was stamped onto white card, and coloured with alchohol markers and then had glossy accents applied.   The compass was also stamped onto white card and coloured and glossy accents applied.

The background was created using a complimentary stencil from Andy Skinner and one of his little board nuts had gilding wax applied to it for the centre of the propeller blades.

Quite pleased with how this turned out.

Steampunk Tray

Well it was supposed to be a steampunk rusty finish to this wooden tray.  Hasn't quite turned out as I wanted - I think I should have sealed the wood first with pva or similar.   Although I made sure the paint was very wet, the salt technique wasn't quite so good.   Possibly need to use sea salt or rock salt.

Painted in much the same way as the rustic heart, finishing with the quin gold.   I think it looks more like mahogany than ruster metal, but hey ho - I still like it.

I love the nails and bolt heads that came in the greyboard kit.  Painted with paynes grey and quin gold and a little gold rubbed over the edge with my finger - they look so realist in real life.

another view

Rusty Heart and Crackled Heart

At last my media paints and bits and bobs have arrived from Hochanda, and I have had a little play using one of the greyboard hearts that came in the kit.

I first painted the heart with paynes grey and sprinkled salt into it, which when dry gave a pitted look.  I then went over with some of the grunge media paints - a blue and a green and then finally went over it with the quin gold (which is actually red).    Love, love, love these paints they are beautifully translucent and I was really pleased with the rusty finish,   

Can't wait to try out more of the elements that came in the kit and do some steampunk art, which is slightly out of my comfort zone, but do admire the effects.  So watch this space.

I also purchased some of the different mediums.  I painted the whole heart with red paint, and then applied antiquing cream to the bottom half.  The top half of the heart was double crackled, with weathered wood and crackle paste, and painted yellow.   I could have done with applying the weathered wood a bit thicker, as I didn't quite get the depth of crackle that I wanted - will obviously have to play a bit more.

I then removed the antiquing cream with a baby wipe and stencilled the design .  I think next time I will do a resist technique for the stencil or some texture paste.   However, I was only playing and getting used to the products.

Finally I used some green paint and with a stencil brush applied some colour over the crackle paste effect.