Steampunk notebook!!

Life has been hectic lately with not enough hours in the day.  However, you can never be too busy to play with art supplies!  This notebook cover is something I made a few weeks ago but had not photographed until today.

I haven't put the pages inside or applied the binding yet.

I see steampunk in there!

 This started life as a hard back, spiral bound notebook from Sainsbury 21 x 15 cm.   The rest is all from my art supplies.  I started out withe steampunk sections.  Most parts are made with grunge paper with a little plastic used for the gears and some half dome pearls for bolts.

 Various layers of paint, washes and dry brushing give it a metallic look. The final dry brush layer was silver paint, which you can see has hit the high spots.

The 'metal' strapping is actually grunge paper with the holes made with a hole punch.  The punch pieces are then used in other areas as rivets.

Inside the front cover is a page from a 1931 edition of Punch with a phrenology head stamped over it.  The edges have been given a faux burned effect and I stamped some 'blotches' in a rusty orange colour.  The circle around the eye is Golden Iridescent Bronze - gorgeous paint.

The back of the book inside cover is the same except no circle around the eye and the outer back cover is plain 'rock'

My heart was broken

I learnt a valuable art lesson today with this piece.  When things go terribly wrong with a piece, don't throw it away, just keep working it until the problem is resolved.

I am so pleased I did.....

My heart is full of hope

Because this piece went through a major rework, it has a ridiculous number of layers.  I'll omit the error layers in the description, so as not to confuse anyone.  The first layer was gesso, followed by high build molding paste through a stencil.  Then came golden fluid acrylics in red, white,  yellow and my new favourite Iron Oxide (it sparkles).
While that was drying I used a gel medium transfer technique on the cherubs to put them on canvas (worked really well).  Then I used a scrap of canvas as a stamp and randomly stamped with heavy paint.
The wings are grunge paper, painted brown / black then embossed with silver, then again with UTEE to give a look of tin.  Distressed them with black paint to knock back the shine.
The large heart is a technique I've been playing with for a few weeks.  Card stock with high gesso peaks, texture paste, bead gel and high lift molding paste.
Next I applied paint techniques using burnt umber, fine gold, fine bronze, teal, white and some more iron oxide.

The heart shape was torn from orange card stock, painted it with Lumiere paints and then glued it to the base card before stamping with a crackle stamp.  It was finished off with some random stamping and my trusty oil pastels.