SanDee&amelie's Summer Special 2016 - Altered Steampunk Notebook

Hi, servus and I hope you have all been enjoying a lovely summer so far!

As every year we are doing the two months long challenge for July and August over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges so you can all enjoy the sun and a great time outside without having to worry about missing our challenge or the chance to win one of our prizes or make our Top5.

Team B (including humble me) are sharing their projects today to remind you of our challenge and provide you with additional inspiration. If you haven't checked out the makes of Team A at the start of July and our additional Extra Steam Power posts, I highly recommend you do so too! Just hop over to our challenge blog and get yourself a good dose of steampunk mojo!

We have three instead of two prizes to give away this time as lovely Glenda from boozybear steampunk chipboard pieces is generously donating another surprise package for a lucky winner!

I have altered a little notebook I have been given by my lovely friends who collect alterable stuff for me!

This is the little notebook in its humble beginnings:

I had a happy, messy play with shrink foil (not sure if this is the proper translation - maybe it is "shrink plastic" in English, but it says "Folie" (=foil) in German), some of my favourite steampunk stamps, DecoArt Dazzling Metallics, black Gesso and modelling paste, the new Tim Holtz Sizzix BigZ "Mosaic" die and a TCW gears stencil.

And this is the result:

Sizzix dies work great on shrink foil! As you can see I also die cut the rectangle ornate frame which I used for another project I am going to share with you over at the SASPC challenge blog later this month.


I used black archival stamping ink to stamp my images onto the frosted side of the cut out shrink foil pieces.

This image shows the rubber stamp and the already shrunk panel to its right so you can see how small shrink foil pieces get (about the third of the original size).

I have to admit that I stopped taking images a little later during the process as I got completely carried away while drybrushing....but I will try to explain everything in detail!

The book was covered with a coat of black Gesso first. Once that had dried I added black modelling paste through a gears stencil and let that dry naturally.

To make the stencilled texture visible I dry brushed the cover with different tones of DecoArt Dazzling Metallics (starting with Copper, then adding Moss Pearl and Teal in some spots). I also lightly dry brushed the cover with a mix of Light Buttermilk and Navy Blue Americana acrylic paints to tone down the metallic sheen a bit.

Sorry that there are no images of the single stages...I mainly dry brushed the cover with different metallic and matte paints and followed my guts until I was content with the look.

The good thing with acrylic paints is: you can go in and add and cover up and add until you like what you see. Acrylic paints are very forgiving as they dry pretty quick...so new layers can be added almost instantly to change the tones and looks.


This image of the finished book shows the different paints and tones I used - you can spot the Copper, the Moss Pearl, the Teal and the Orange Flicker Metallic Lustre:

I also used the Orange Flicker Metallic Lustre to stencil on the "Dream" word.

The edges of the shrink foil tiles were treated with Orange Flicker too. I used my fingertip to apply the metallic Lustre. Then the tiles were flipped over and given a thorough coat of heavy white Gesso at the backs before I glued them to the cover using matte Decou-Page.

I also painted the rubber band that keeps the book closed with Orange Flicker so it would match the design.

The back and spine of the notebook were painted with black Gesso too and then given light strokes of Orange Flicker and Cosmic Blue Metallic Lustres. Et voilá!

The advantage of using black Gesso as a base coat is that you can directly add the black modelling paste to it and that they form a great base for adding on paints (without the use of having to paint a base layer of a darker tone first). I also sprinkled on some gold and dark brown spray paints and stamped on a crackle pattern here and there for more texture:

And that pretty much sums up the whole process. I hope you like my little steampunk notebook and leave inspired!

There is time until the end of August to enter up to 5 projects (instead of the usual 3 projects per player limit) to our summer special challenge! So I hope to see you over there and play along soon!

Hugs and happy summer crafting!

Claudia

xxx