Steampunk ATCs

This has been a great week!  My butterfly card got into the top 10 on a challenge on the Gingersnap creations blog and... I now have 4 followers! So pleased that anyone is interested enough to follow me - thank you so much!

I just finished making a few ATCs using bits from the Graphic 45 steampunk papers. I started off with the idea of birds coming out of a top hat and I knew there was a couple of hats in these papers. Flicking through them inspired me to make the other cards.

I'd like to enter the first card into the Stampman resist techniques theme challenge. The background used a embossing resist technique - I heat embossed a stamped script image with clear embossing powder then blended brushed corduroy distress ink over it. I removed most of the embossing powder by re-melting it and soaking it into a sheet of paper,  then stamped watch and bird images with vintage photo distress ink. The lady is cut out from the graphic 45 papers as was the banner which I painted to allow me to stamp 'imagine' instead of the original text.

The blackbird ATC (below left) used a Paperartsy mini-stamp stamped in clear embossing ink covered with gold perfect pearls. The bird, roses, and clock were cut from the steampunk papers and the bird was embossed in black to make it stand out better.

The final one with the birds coming out of the hat used a Tim Holtz stamps with some lovely background paper from My Minds Eye - but spot the "deliberate" mistake in the background (oops! - I really need to pay more attention to what I'm doing!).

Oh well, back to work tomorrow, but hopefully I'll still be able to find some time for crafting in the evenings.

Sarah xx