Steam punk, dylusions and loads of cogs! (tutorial)

 

Products Used:

 

• Tim Holtz Tag and Bookplates die
• Ranger Dylusions-
• Melted Chocolate
• Squeezed Orange
• Dirty Martini
• Stampendous stamp - Clockworks
• Kanban stamp set - Steampunk, Jasper
• Tim Holtz movers and shapers cogs die
• Stampendous Fran-tage embossing enamel
• aged copper
• aged Taupe
• Distress ink
• vintage photo
• rusty hinge
• crushed olive
• Distress Paint
• antiqued bronze
• tarnished brass
• Tim Holtz stamp - time is a companion quote

 

I have struggled to make fathers day cards over the years because when I make them I want them to reflect my dad, or my dad-in-law or my husband. Same with birthday cards for them. Why are men so hard to create for???

Anyway I had recently visited our local Hobbycraft and every time I went in the last month or so I had seen this gorgeous Kanban stamp set and kept umming and ahhing over it. What would I really use it for? Well this last time I decided I would definitely buy. It was on sale for £5 and I doubted it would be that easy to come by in the future. Unfortunately when I looked for it, it was no longer on the shelves and I thought I had lost my chance. Luckily for me though, a very helpful employee had a look in the back for me and found one!

 

Of course when you get new stamps you have to try them out immediately right? So I stamped all three of the characters in the set onto watercolour paper and painted it with my distress inks.

 

I took my stamp pads in the colours I wanted and pressed them into my splodge mat (or non stick craft sheet) then I used my waterbrush/paintbrush and added a bit of water on the side and mixed with the colour as I needed it.

 

I used vintage photo for his trousers, scarf and hat. I added more colour to where the shadows were and dragged the colour with water only away into the lighter areas to create depth. I did the same with rusty hinge for the jacket and trim on the top hat. I shaded the darker areas with faded jeans and used crushed olive for the jackets trim. I used antique linen for the face and tarnished brass and bronze distress paint for the base as I wanted to give it a slightly more metallic look.

 

I liked the colouring so much that I cut it out to use on a tag with the intention of making it a fathers day topper. Not sure I achieved that but I tried!

 

I sprayed my tag with Dirty Martini, Melted chocolate and squeezed orange. I then water stamped onto the dry tag with my inkadinkado clock works cling stamp to fade it into the background.

 

I used the cogs from the same Kanban stamp set and stamped them around the tag (making sure they would at least partially be visible once  I stuck my character down. I embossed these with fran-tage embossing powder in aged taupe. I love these embossing powders. They look make things look so real!

 

I usually use white embossing powder with my dylusions tags so that the image will stand out. Only here, white really wouldn't have worked with the orange and browns. So I chose gold embossing powder and stamped my tim holtz stamp in the corner. It says:

 

 

 Time is a

companion

that goes

with us

on the journey.

It reminds

us to cherish

each moment

because it

will never

come again.

What we

leave behind

is not as

important

as how we

have lived.

 

What a great quote right? Makes you think.

 

 

After the full background was finished I started playing  with placement. I cut some cogs with my movers and shapers cogs die from Tim Holtz and placed them around my character to find the best fit. I overlapped some and put some on top of the other but I made sure that I wouldn't be covering too much of the cogs that I had stamped earlier. I also had a clock charm that I wanted to incorporate into the tag somewhere so I played with the placement of that as well.

 

 

 

 

Obviously the white cogs wont do so, to make them as realistic as possible, I painted a few of them with tarnished brass distress paint and others with antique bronze which I then coated with fran-tage aged taupe and aged copper. The paint itself when heated starts to bubble so if you aren't after that sort of look then I would chose to use a different base or be careful of how long you heat it. I like the texture so I heated them extra long just to get more bubbled up effects. I actually figured this out by accident one day doing just this. I was a little worried about the bubbles and tried to flatten them a little after it had cooled a tad but it left a sort of pocked mark look which reminded me of hammered metal.

 

Once those were all done (I made more than I was going to use just in case) I placed them back on the tag where I wanted them, again overlapping some but keeping them in a slightly more natural placement, like you would see with actual cogs.

After all the base pieces were stuck on, I positioned my steampunk man at an angle on the tag over the cogs. This did cover most of the background ghost stamping but if you look closely you can still see it. I decided I didn't want the clock charm where I had originally put it. The way the position of the man is the clock would have been stuck right in the middle and would have broken up my 'flow' if you know what I mean. It also would have covered up a lot of the painted detail that I was so proud of. I still wanted it on the tag though because of the time reference in the quote so I attached it with some thin brown satin ribbon at the top. Its a little bit bigger than what would work best but I still like it.

So here is the finished tag! In the end I don't know that this works as a fathers day card for my family in particular. Maybe if I attached it to a card base that had a train coming around a corner???Hmm more thoughts!  Anyway, I hope it gave you some inspiration to create your own steampunk goodness.

 

Have a crafty day!!

 

~Sam.~

Live in the sunshine! (Tutorial)

 

Products Used:

• Tim Holtz Tag and Bookplates Die
• Distress inks in multiple colours
• Adirondack paint dabber - white
• Distress Paint
• Fired Brick
• Wild Honey
• Mustard seed
• Peeled Paint
• Broken China
• Chipped Sapphire
• Tim holtz embossing folder - Rays
• Technique Tuesday Stamp set - Bring on the Sun
• Alcohol Inks
• Tim Holtz Ideology - Facets
• Tim Holtz Components Rubber stamp - Dots
• Stampendous embossing powder - White
• Visible Image stamp set - Ink splats

 

First of all, I apologize for starting the pics in the middle of everything and not from the beginning. I often start projects with no idea what Im doing or where Im going with it so I tend to forget to take the pictures a long the way! 

 

So here we go. For the background tag I used distress inks in various colours and to be honest this particular tag probably started out as using up leftover ink from another tag I was doing. I promise I will make a tutorial on that technique in the future and post the link here. So I had my lovely spare tag already colours and just got a random bit of inspiration and decided to paint a rainbow on it! I had new distress paints that I really wanted to use so here is where these came in. Distress paints are not completely opaque like most paints and with my lack of planning ahead I had to improvise so what I did here was paint the background shape with white acrylic paint. I had my Adirondack paint dabber at hand but since I wasn't dabbing I just removed the lid and stuck a paintbrush in.

 



with coloured edges

without coloured edges

Once I let that dry I did the usual ROYGBIV on the rainbow colour in distress paint, Except for the purple which I did a bit of colour mixing with the blue and red as I don't yet have purple. The slickness of the white paint and the distinct properties of the distress paint made it separate a bit but to be honest, I quite like that look as it sort of gave it a grungy effect. I then used my blending tool and some chipped sapphire distress ink to bring in a vignette affect around the edges. This is something I do a lot as it seems to add a lot of depth to my tags with just a small amount of effort.

 

 

 

At this point I left that tag to fully dry and using a clear tag that I cut from used packaging I embossed it with Tim Holtz Rays embossing folder and coloured it with some red and yellow alcohol inks.

 

Going back to my first tag, I created a mask of my rainbow by tracing it onto a post it and used white paint to stamp some texture onto the background with my sanded wooden stamp. I pulled out my 'Bring on the sunshine' stamp set by Technique Tuesday and selected the Sun=<3, the Irish blessing and the definition stamps and randomly stamped them with memento black ink. I also used Visible Image Ink splat stamps and stamped those in mustard seed distress paint all over the tag. Its a subtle look but I think it gives it a bit of extra texture. We like texture!

 

I placed the clear tag  on top for positioning and drew and cut out a cloud shape from white vellum, which I then embossed in white embossing powder with a dots stamp. I wasn't overly fussed about perfection in this case with the embossing powder because, remember, we are going for a bit of a grungy look. This I stuck to the clear tag with foam adhesive squares. I cut these small and stuck them behind each of the dots so it was very secure but the foam wasn't visible.

I stamped the 'Live in the Sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air' stamp, again from Technique Tuesday, onto white card and cut out Live in the sunshine which I then framed with black pen and stuck to the clear tag as my sentiment.

 

Once everything was attached where I wanted it, I fastened the clear tag to the other in the corners with mini brads. I chose an orange ribbon to tie to the top, attached a droplet style facet and sun charm to it. Below you can see the finished products.

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed and maybe got some ideas and inspiration along the way!

Have a crafty day!

Sam.