The Grand Tour

The Challenge at Three Muses this week is Steampunk!  It is one of my favourite subjects but this time I have gone less industrial and more romantic with the Grand Tour.  I'm still trying out some new techniques but I'm happy with how this came out.

Dreaming of the Grand Tour

Starting with heavy card stock I die cut one of the short edges using the Tim Holtz Steampunk On The Edge die.  I then painted the cogs in Burned Umber and the rest of the card in Lumiere Halo Rose Gold (not used this for a while and forgot how much I love it).

Next I stamped the lady's face on high quality card and coloured her with Promarkers then stamped a few cogs around her face in both Distress Ink Rusty Hinge and Archival Ink Coffee.I trimmed around the hairline and then used Distress Ink in Rusty Hinge to colour the top and side of her face to help blend her into the background.  After gluing her to the background I stamped more and various cogs to represent hair.

Next I stamped the metal globe in StayzOn Metallic Gold and when it was dry I over-stamped with the quote in Archival Coffee.  I used a couple of other stamps from the Grand Tour plate.
I decided I didn't like the cogs in Burned Umber so I coated them with texture paste, painted them Burned Umber again and then dry brushed them with Iridescent Bronze.

What hasn't come out well on the scan or the photo's is the fantastic glow that comes from the Lumiere paints, Ah well, such is life :)

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.