Von Pappe II: Time for our SASPC winter special challenge!

Hi, servus and thanks for stopping by!
It is that time of the year when we are launching our annual "Steampunk Winter Special" challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges.

As I am one of the two founders and proud owner of this challenge blog (and the very happy and proud "boss" of a fantastic design team) I always like to take this opportunity to thank YOU all out there - our players without whom we wouldn't be where we are today - for always submitting such fantastic inspiring steampunk and industrial style art and craft projects and of course to wish you all happy holidays as our next challenge will go live on 1st January in the next year!

As our winter special challenge is open for two months (until the end of December) the usual rule of the allowed three entries per person and challenge gets changed to five - twice as much time to create - more projects to enter (maybe). At least this is part of the idea behind our winter and summer special challenges: to give you more time to focus on what we all love about this season and mabye still even find the time to squeeze in one or the other project that fits our challenge (and challenge rules). If there is a touch of winter or Christmas to your makes that is more than welcome of course.

My project definitely has a touch of the approaching holidays (and hopefully the snow that will come with it...over here in Vienna Christmas holidays mostly are muddy and grey, sometimes even with spring like temperatures and green...I miss the snow! Well, maybe it will be a white X-mas this year. Who knows...

I made it snow instead on my steampunk project... ;)

Some heaps of snow have gathered in the nooks of the gears...

I've made some steps images so I can take you through the process if you like (if not, simply scroll to the end of this post and follow the link to our Winter Special Challenge post).

I mainly played with layers and different textures.

I used a left over MDF heart and some left over old MDF gears from That Craft Place (I'm afraid these aren't available anymore but they have other new MDF pieces that are worth a look) that I had in my stash alongside some of the Mini Cogs Woodshapes and some of the Clock Faces & Clock Hands from Calico Craft Parts and of course a lot of DecoArt and DecoArt media products.

I primed the large MDF pieces with a thorough layer of DecoArt media white Gesso. Then I used DecoArt media fluid acrylic paints Cobalt Teal Hue, Phtalo Blue and Phtalo Turquoise and painted some of the cogs' edges in watercolour technique so I got a kind of fading effect.

Once the Gesso had dried on the heart, I applied some DecoArt media white Crackle Paint here and there with a palette knife and let it dry naturally.

The dried crackled heart was given two layers of diluted Prussian Blue Hue media fluid acrylic paint that behaved differently on the Crackle Paint and created a darker effect where there was just Gesso.

Then I went wild with some Viva Rusty Paper and DecoArt media Antiquing Creams Raw Umber and Titanium White to create a lot of texture and patterns. I sprinkled diluted Prussian Blue Hue and white media Shimmer Mister on top and finished my heart off by blending the edges with black archival stamping ink using a piece of blending foam.

Some of the cogs had been painted using DecoArt Dazzling Metallic paints Moss Pearl and Teal,

others had been sealed with a coat of Triple Thick before I loosely added media white Crackle Paint on top of these.

I used my fingertip to add some Viva Rusty Patina here and there (and on the clock hand as well).

The larger arrow was also covered with a thick coat of DecoArt media Liquid Glass for additional texture and dimension.

At that point I decided to also crape on some white Crackle Paint to my heart in some spots and to highlight the cracks later with a thin wash of Phtalo Turquoise. After that it was time to glue the finished gears in place.

To make the blue gears stand out from the background I added a thin wash of Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide media fluid acrylic to the heart's background.

One of the last steps before I left everything over night to let it dry, was to add DecoArt Snow Tex to the gears and the Liquid Glass (as mentioned earlier) to the glued in place arrow.

As I needed more glittery snowy bling I decided to also paint the gears and heart with a thin layer of DecoArt Glamour Dust Ice Crystal and the dried snow with diluted Glamour Dust Turquoise Sparkle. As these are quite translucent and only add a faint tint they still leave visible what's going on underneath.

This is how my steampunk holiday heart looked like in the next morning...

Time to add a final layer of gears, clock face and hand for some contrast and more depth.
The Calico Craft Parts were glued in place using matte Decou-page (that I had also used the day before to glue the pieces to the heart of course) and left in their natural state - actually I really like the MDF brown and neat surface texture and it made for a lovely contrast to all the weathered texture I had created so far.