Two Rusty Crusty Tags for SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges

 Hi, servus and welcome to the start of a new challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges, dear friends! 

A new two months long challenge is waiting for you to be faced and with my inspirational project for May and June I decided to get rusty again! 

I was given some delicious chipboard pieces to play with by lovely Glenda from boozybear - one of our two prize sponsors: two cool gentlemen from the "Canes" set, the beautiful "Umbrella" set, a fine selection of awesome cogs and gears and the fabulous "Stacked Suitcases"! 

Of course these had to be used with some steampunk/industrial style travel theme tags! 

I started with die cutting two #8 size tags from old packaging cardboard using my "Tag&Bookplates" die designed by Tim Holtz - one of the very first dies I bought and still one of my most often used ones. 

I ran them through my BigShot using an embossing folder from Carabelle Studio and another from Spellbinders (I think). 

Then I added a base layer of red-brown acrylic paint - which already gave a great rusty appearance. 

I enhanced that by dry brushing the dried tags with Carbon Black acrylic paint and adding sprinkles of a very dark grey that I mixed by adding a tiny amount of white acrylic paint to the black paint left overs on my palette. I also painted the chipboard pieces with that dark grey tone. 

The hat, shoes, umbrella and suitcase handles were heat embossed using black embossing powder. The buckles got painted using DecoArt Extreme Sheen "Vintage Brass". I also added sprinkles of that to the tags before I fixed the finished pieces in place. The umbrella man and suitcases got a bit of shading with a detail brush and black acrylic paint for more depth and dimension. 

To fix the elements in place I used some chipboard left overs that I glued to the backs. 

The second gear was heat embossed with Ranger "Rust" embossing enamel. 

I found the umbrellas needed to be painted over with Yellow Iron Oxide acrylic paint - as this tone has a bit of a green-ish touch it makes the orange rusty tones pop even more and it also forms a great contrast. 

The quotes were stamped using Tim's "Noble Gent" stamp set. 

Some detail shots: 

I hope you like my two tags! I made these in my new (and not yet fully equipped) studio in our new home in the countryside! I love this spot so much and moving in kept us busy during the last months - so this was one other reason for my being absent for quite some time (besides struggling with break down, exhaustion and depression after an obviously too long struggle with health issues and many nasty side effects from tried out medications...but I won't bore you with that now). 

Here's a first view of my new creative spot at Lake Atter! So far I've managed to put together a base equipment that allows me to play whenever time allows and creativity comes by for a short visit (which isn't too often at the moment, but it is slowly returning). 

Two thirds of the shelves are still empty - and I guess these will only get filled slowly as it is a slow process to find out which things I want to keep and use in my Vienna studio and which ones in our country home. The room also serves as a guest room - therefor the sofa which can be turned into a comfy bed. 

I intend to buy less new crafting stuff, but one item had to bought again - the BigShot. I found I couldn't do without one in either spot! I remember when I got my first one...I was a bit sceptic if I would use it a lot, but I found it really took my creativity to another level and I wouldn't want to miss it now. 

And here's a first picture of the lovely view from my studio window - taken several weeks ago when winter came back for a short but hefty surprise visit after spring had already set in. 

But back to our steampunk challenges! The team and I are waiting for your entry over at our challenge blog! I hope to see you play along with us soon!

Hugs, stay safe and happy crafting! 

Claudia

xxx