Portrait of a Steampunk Ghost?

Servus and welcome to my share for our mid-month reminder over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges!

"Gear it Up!"

is this month's motto and we all love to play with gears and cogs, don't we?


My inspirational offer is a rather quick and easy make this time and it originated from a happy accident while cleaning the (Andy Skinner) stencil I used on this project. To do so I had placed the stencil on a white paper sheet and had wiped the paint off it with a baby wipe. This way I accidentally created a ghostly looking image of the top hatted gentleman:

It reminded me a bit of those wonderful old black and white ghost photographs from the early beginnings of photography.

I really liked that very much so I decided to use it for my "gear it up" creation. I added several tones of distress inks in several ways to the image to make it look stained and yellowed.
Then I die cut a panel shape from heavy cardboard and glued the image onto it. I also stamped some gears and words (and the lovely Darkroom Door lightbulb image) in archival ink and added some die cut gears that had been treated with alcohol inks first.

For a finish I dabbed some black acrylic paint around the edges of my panel - et voila! Geared up and ready to show - my ghost portrait panel!

The March challenge is open until the end of the month and we have Tusia's  fab 7 Dots Studio as our sponsor this time! So don't miss the chance to win!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia xxx