Steampunk Tic Tac Toe - the Great SASPC Summer Special Challenge

Hello, servus and welcome to today's start of our great summer steampunk special challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges!

As most of us will be on holidays during the next weeks we decided to have this challenge run from the start of July until the end of August - which gives you all two months time to create and enter a project! There are also fab prizes to win (yes, prizes!!! ;)

And who doesn't love and enjoy a round of happy, messy, crafty, artsy Tic-Tac-Toe.....!
So my wonderful DT ladies helped me find a lot of yummy ingredients and I made a (rather sketchy) grid for our challenge:

(click on image to enlarge)

Steampunk Tic Tac Toe is played by choosing one of the horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines' ingredients to use them on your project.

I went for the diagonal line the deep sea, metal paints and crackle and created another shadow-box! (those who already know me know how much I love to create shadow-boxes). ;)

My son loves all those mysterious and wonderful deep sea creatures - and so do I! So I created this shadow box for him and it shows his two favourite animals: the giant squid and the sperm whale  (which is one of my favs too).

They are UmWow Studio laser cut pieces which I covered with a coat of acrylic paint and a coat of clear DecoArt media Crackle Glaze after the paint had dried. The white DecoArt media Antiquing Cream finally made the cracks visible and I think it really looks quite close to a sperm whale's skin! Yay!

The images of the aquanaut and the sunken ship are from an Oxford Impressions stamp set and I painted them with diluted DecoArt media acrylic paint before I fussy cut them and glued some thick foam board pieces to their backs.

For the background of my box and for the deep sea landscape I used designer papers and scraps. The silver-y bubbles were stamped on using DecoArt Metallic Lustre and a 3rd Eye stamp.

The aquanaut's helmet, boots and belt were painted with DecoArt Dazzling Metallics paints.

The black smoker was created using a torn scrap from one of my old Gelli prints.

The box I used for my shadow box was a lid from a(nother) chocolate box I had to empty for the sake of art.

The outside of the frame was painted with DecoArt Chalky Finish paint as it adheres to slick surfaces without any preparation. The sunken ship got a coat of DecoArt media Quinacridone Gold. Because of the paint's translucency the stamped image shows through without any loss of detail!

I hope you like my little deep sea adventure! And I would love to invite you to hop over to our challenge blog and check out the creations of my wonderful teamies who have - as usual - outdone themselves!

I wish you all the most amazing, wonderful, happy, relaxing, inspiring, fun,....holidays and hope to see you over at our summer special challenge during the next two months!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx

Just Three Colours - Our Creative Corner's February Challenge

Servus and welcome back, dear crafting friends and followers old and especially anew!

Time to introduce to you Jenny's (aka Button) challenge over at Our Creative Corner! This month we want you to go for:


"Just Three Colours - use only shades of blue, brown and plum/purple on your project; no black lines accepted!"


This means that not even black lines from stamped or digital stamped images are allowed with your makes. 
I really loved her idea of banning black lines - it makes us look differently at the use of our stamps and ink pads and opens new ways for new designs. Which always is a good thing! 

Actually the brown paper I stamped on changed the stamped on colours ("gathered twigs", "rich cocoa" and "dusty concord") into a darker tone than I had expected - so some of them look rather dark brown- or purpl-ish...which looks a lot "richer in tone" than a black line ever could. So honestly I really like this happy accident ;)

I tried two tags on which I only used Distress inks "broken china", "dusty concord", "chipped sapphire", "vintage photo" (for blending the portraits) and "gathered twigs". 

Using four of these for the wrinkle free distress technique on a piece of white card for creating the background, some of the lighter blues and browns mixed into a shade of turquoise...which I had not thought about but was obvious to happen - and which I really liked... ;)

As most of it was going to be covered up by a lot of layers I decided to use my tag anyway even though turquoise definitely is not just a shade of blue... ;)



 



I finally was able to get the awesome "Dr. Coffin's Apothecary" stamp sheet from Oxford Impressions with a German stamps shop last autumn and the browns reminded me of old labels...so I decided to make apothecary themed tags. 


 On the first tag I accidentally found that the Ranger embossing powder "brown puffs" is exactly the same colour as the kraft paper I used it on - which makes it look even more like real embossing...wow!

  I played around with the gorgeous sewing stamps from Prima and heat embossing with Ranger "rust" and "brown puffs" embossing powders. 

 

Most of the edges of the stamped and cut out images were distressed. Some of the papers I stamped on were first blended with some blue or purple shades of Distress ink and sprinkled with some droplets of water, to give a more aged look to them. 

 

Making two tags at the same time gave me the opportunity to try (and compare) variations of the same technique or colour effect. I guess I will be doing this more often from now on! 


For the two portraits of imaginative "Arthur Coffin" or "Monsieur Routen" I made a copy of two photographs of some of my ancestors. They fit perfectly, don't you think? 

At least they could be doctors as they look very earnest, don't they? 

But most people in old photographs do...maybe because they had to sit still for a couple of minutes to get sharp images....maybe because having a photograph done was a much more important and honouralbe matter in those days than it is now... I often wonder why my ancestors - even the children - looked so dignified when they had their photographs taken...and how it might have been living in their times... with a lot of technical things working much more slowly (or not even invented then). 

 Have you already heard that there's a prize to win each month now at Our Creative Corner?














 All you have to do is enter our challenge with a make that follows all the challenge criteria and our general rules... maybe you will make our winner, Top3 or even the prize win?! Join in and use blues, browns and purple/plum only!




 




 

This month our generous prize sponsor is Nicecrane Designs! 

See you there!




Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xx

Altered Clipboard

Servus and welcome to a short post today in which I want to share with you the clipboard I altered for my son, who needed it for a visit with his class at the Schönbrunner Zoo.

As some of you may already know he is a huge fan of everything sea-related...all species of fish and wales, but especially deep sea creatures. I had one grey clipboard made from heavy cardboard and it was the perfect occasion to use the lovely Oxford Impressions stamp set again :)

His soul is really longing for the secrets of the sea.... so when I translated the stamped quote to him, he said this stamp must have been made especially for him. And of course he needed a name plate on the clipboard too.

The background was made using a mix of DecoArt Americana acrylic colours and a quick spreading technique (which I never get tired of using obviosly ;) and then I stamped the images directly onto it using black jet archival ink from Ranger.

The center piece is a colour copy of a postcard I found at an Advent market. I glued it to the board using glossy Mod Podge and then I sealed the whole board with Mod Podge to make it more durable. Before doing so I drew some air bubbles with a white gel pen in some places. Done.

Sadly they did not have to use their clipboards at the zoo, but my son told me that he took it out of his bag anyway...."to show a bit off with it" as he said. Could I ask for a bigger laud? Guess not :)

Thanks for stopping by for this quick share.
Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia x

Matchbox Steampunk - August challenge "chez SanDee&amelie's"

Welcome back for another appetizer for the new challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges :)

This month we want you to 

use one or more matchboxes with your projects. 

As always our challenge is "anything goes"

as long as it is Steampunk 

and our monthly theme is incorporated. 

Of course this month we have a wonderful guest designer (with a lot of contageous creativity going on ;) with us again and a prize to give away for this month's randomly drawn prize winner. ;)


I had rolled this theme in my head for quite a long time - having no idea even though it was me who suggested the matchbox challenge... but after I had a long play with some white matchboxes, combining them in multiple ways, stacking them, building a row and whatever you can do with three matchboxes, I came up with a creation that I would call "cubist", as it reminds me of a lot of cubist sculptures that all have in common that the artist had a play with cubes, trying to arrange them to a shape and form that might draw the viewers interest to it ;)

So here comes my "Steampunk Cubism" *giggle:

It also reminds me of geometry drawing one learns at school ;)

I first covered a piece of crumpled and then again unfolded brown paper with random brushes of white DecoArt Gesso and after that had dried I stamped some Kaisercraft "dicitionary meanings" and IndigoBlu adverts on it with black archival ink. I covered the matchboxes with this paper, cutting off the excess afterwards.

The compartments of the matchboxes were sprayed with GlimmerMist first and then covered with a filmstrip washi tape on the outsides (which also helped to stabilize them).

Then I gave the edges of the boxes a shading with Distress ink "walnut stain" and glued the three boxes together. I also added some torn scraps of the brown stamped paper for more interest:

For the insides of the compartments I stamped three Steampunk images (from Oxford Impressions and Artistic Outpost) onto more gessoed brown paper, cut three pieces to size and glued them to the boxes' bottoms.

Next I stamped the "cube steam punk" onto white card using my HeroArts letter stamps and jet black and sepia archival inks. I cut the letters out separately and glued them to three different areas of my "sculpture". Afterwards I drew a black border around each letter for more depth.

Having all my paper work done I went on with embellishing. I created a handle for one of the compartments using thin black wire.

The second "drawer" got a metal tab on it showing my lucky number: 7.

To this matchbox I fixed a Tim Holtz idea-ology light bulb using wire again. The wire also holds the gear in place.

To the top of the third compartment I glued a Prima butterfly nut that I gave some dabs with alcohol ink "terra cotta", with which I also coloured the bulbs' sockets.

The bottlecap (one of my on-my-balcony-rusted ;) was embellished with a plastic button I coloured in black and gave some metallic rub ons from DecoArt afterwards. I also glued a rusty screw to the side of the "cube" matchbox.

The upright matchbox compartment was glued to the box to stay in place. The other two compartments can be closed and opened (to hide or reveal their "treasures").
I had a lot of fun embellishing my tiny sculpture with Prima-, selfmade- and Tim Holtz idea-ology goodness and I hope you like the outcome too :)

Please, hop over to our challenge blog to see what my dear friend and Steampunk soulmate SanDee1899 and our special guest Candy Colwell (YESSS, THE Candy Colwell ;) have prepared for your inspiration! I thank you for staying with me this far (as it was a quite picture heavy post again), wish you a happy crafting time and look forward to seeing your matchbox creations soon entered with our challenge at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk challenges. You always enter such a lot of creative awesome stuff - I can hardly wait to see what you come up with next!

I join the challenges over at SimonSaysStamp - "Anything Goes", Fashionalbe Stamping Challenges - "Script/Books/Pages/Print" , Divas by Design - "Favourite Color Combo" (I LOVE black and white combined with browns!), Out of a Hat Creations - "Numbers" (my lucky number 7 appears two times on my project) and Lady Anne's Challenges - "Monochrome" with this project.


Hugs,

die amelie x

"Counting Shells"

"By the Sea" is SSSaS's theme for this week and almost last minute I decided to create a project for entering their challenge, using my recently bought Sizzix Accordion Flip die.


As it is too hot for me to think properly I skip a long how-to today and leave you alone with the pictures. I hope you like it and that you enjoy the hot summer weather!

I used white Gesso, a blending tool, DI s "broken china" and "gathered twigs", blue card, some mica, alcohol inks, Sizzix, Sizzix accordion flip die, Oxford Impressions images stamped onto tissue paper and glued to the background using DecoArt Decou-page matte (which I watered down a bit), some cord, texture paste, the TCW "Mini numerals" stencil, my HeroArts letter stamps, archival ink "Rich Cocoa", two half pearls and some glue.

Hugs,

die amelie x

I also enter this project with Fashionable Stamping Challenge's "Flora and Fauna" challenge, with Country View Crafts "Summer Sizzler" challenge, Heck of a Challenge's "The Sea" challenge and The Crafting Cafe's "Summer's here" challenge.