Steampunk Challenge - June: Underwater!

This image shows "salmo platycephalus rota dentata" (the common gear sea trout) in its natural surroundings. It has already been discovered within depths over 200 metres but usually inherits the brighter reef zones. ;)

Also very old and fairly rusted specimen have been discovered with the stomachs of grown up squid too - so its age can be estimated to reach more than two years really, which is exceptionally old for trouts in general. Maybe "salmo rota dentata's" elongated life span has something to do with their metal skin, which makes them rather non-digestible bait for trouts' usual enemies.

;)

Hi there and welcome 

to June's challenge over at 

SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges! 

This month's theme is 

Underwater!

We want to see your 2D and/or 3D creations. As always with our challenge it is "anything goes" - as long as your projects stick to the theme in some way. 

This month I have the pleasure to present my project along with  SanDee1899's and Drycha's awesome underwater creations (and Drycha, owner of 3rdEye stamp shop, has also prepared a new stamp design on this occasion to be released! Cool, huh?)

I promised her - as this month she is also our prize sponsor - to use 3rd Eye stamps only - which really was not hard to keep as she offers some great Steampunk stamps with her collections too. ;)

To start with, I first have to show you one of my crafting hobbies I share rather seldomly: crafting with paper cut out sheets. 

I had this lovely trout I once made and wanted to use it for my inspirational project for this challenge. 

So first I covered the  trout with some GlimmerMists and other metal colour sprays to achieve a metallic and pale blue surface for further treatment. Then I stamped the lovely gears and cogs stamps onto some tissue paper and let that dry. 

You can see the 3rd Eye stamps to the right (already mounted to some cling foam) and partially cut out  prints waiting for the next step: glueing the images onto the trout using Mod Podge. 

After that had dried I coloured some of the gears using a white gel and a blue brush felt tip pen and added some copper "Inka Gold" along  with  some tiny blotches of Mr. Huey's "gold" here and there. 

I also die cut some gears from metallic blue card and glued them to some of the fins and the gills. I adhered two tiny metal gears to the corners of the mouth to add some real metal. Then I created a stand from metal wire for my trout to pose on and fixed it using the hot glue gun.


Voila!

I hope the images show a little of the sheen of the copper rub on and gold spreckles - this one was quite difficult to photograph to be honest. So here come some images and close ups for your inspiration:

This close up shows the use of the 3rd Eye script stamp which I really love as it is so versatile for creating texture! 

You can also see the coloured gears and the partially used script image with the fins. I also drew some blubbles onto the surface to create the impression of "underwater action". ;)

The tail fin needed some special care: I stamped the two great bulb light stamps using archival black ink onto some tissue and glued the cut out pieces to the fin using Mod Podge. After that had dried I added some white highlights with a gel pen too. The edge of the tail fin was decorated with mica fragments as I felt my trout needed some "recognition mark" - so it cannot be mistaken for "salmo trutta rota dentata", that has a quite unremarkable tail fin.

 

Salmo platycephalus rota dentata's quite vulnerabel stomach to the left. You can well see the copper markings that make this specimen so very special. 

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you had some fun and leave quite inspired and ready to go for your own projects to enter with our June challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk challenges! 

See you!

Hugs,
die amelie x