The Ravages of Time - June Challenge at SASPC

Servus and welcome to another mid-month reminder for SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges!

Summer heat has finally (and powerfully) set in and already starts turning my flat and studio into a sauna - so, please, bear with me, when my posts become rather short and less frequent - my brain simply can't cope with the high temperatures (and mojo also seems to have disappeared to chillier regions)....

The challenge theme for June asks you to show us "The Ravages of Time" and as usual our challenges are open to all kinds of media and interpretation as long as the projects entered are steampunk, vintage and/or industrial.

I decided to create another tag. I hadn't done tags for ages and my recent tag for Tim's 12 tags of 2015 really was a lot of fun! So I was up for more! But this one really gave me a hard time - everything I tried didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, I messed up a lot of times and at a point I really thought of throwing it in the bin...but then I followed an advice I have been giving others so many times: just paint over it and start anew!

And I am glad I did because that finally set me on track! Phew!
So here it is: my tag for our "Ravages of Time" challenge - well, I guess it was me who was heavily ravaging rather than time...lol.

The cogs and gears are a cut off piece from a lovely Creative Embellishments chipboard panel. They were covered with loads of different pastes and paints - some scraped on, some sprayed on, some stippled on...

I had also collaged on several scraps from old photographs and book pages when I started my tag, but they have all been covered up - at least they wonderfully add to the textural feel of the tag.

This close-up shows some of the torn edges that are still visible. The lovely calculations stamp is a design from Carabelle Studio. One of my new favourites for sure!

I also stamped it on some of the painted cogs and gears:

The rough, grainy texture is from a layer of DecoArt Texture Fierro that I had painted over.

The various spray paints that I applied over some coats of DecoArt media fluid acrylic paints created some delicate and worn looking effects. (sadly I won't be able to reproduce them as they were results from an act of desperation rather than controlled use of media....lol).

I did a lot of sprinkling, smudgeing, scraping on, wiping off and dabbing...I guess the thought of "well, it can still go to the bin if I don't like it, as it had almost been there anyway" freed me from sticking to any ideas or concepts at all - I just applied various media to see what I would end up with - and that was great fun in the end!

So once a "direction" for the design of my tag finally became visible, I just needed to add some finishing touches (like the dabbed on dark edge) and focal points (like washi tape, word tiles and labels and the all-seeing eye) - et voila!

Believe me - I really felt like an explorer while creating this tag! lol
So I hope you like the end result as much as I do and that you will hop over to our challenge blog to see what my fab teamies have made!

Very curiously looking forward to seeing your "ravaged projects" entered to our challenge soon! ;)

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx

ooops...almost forgot:

I enter my really very masculine tag to the "Make it Masculine" challenge over at Anything But Cute where Cec is hosting their second challenge. Good luck, ladies!