Airship docking:

A little maintenance was required so the airship has docked and sir vagabond watches on as the airship mechanics do their thing...  

It is a 20cm x 20cm canvas.

I will be entering this guy into SanDee and Amelie’s steampunk challenge blog for March/April. This is my third entry. It will be one of many vagabond projects people are entering no doubt. 

I have gone from , never taking part at all, to, three times in one challenge period lol. 

It is good to have something spur you on and motivate you to get creating. 

“Totally owning my rusty wings”.

So from all this talk I’ve been doing about colour schemes and not being in a rut, I think it was in my subconscious. Today, this layout on a canvas emerged when I sat down to craft without a plan. 

I’m just going to own my rusty wings. Rust helps me fly.

Colour quandary...

I am very much a teal and rust, copper and verdigris sort of crafter. I like vintage sepia and dark distressed  items with a bit of faux age. But I want to broaden my horizons try mote colours. So many lovely colours out there. 

I decided to try some mood board challenges. This month, there are a lot of spring colours being suggested so I tried that. The board had yellow, green, duck egg blue, hint of lilac and bunny rabbit brown. You didn’t have to use them all. You could include black or/and white. While I could probably manage a nice tag, card, mini book, with some papers, it turns out I don’t buy papers in those colours.  🙄

So... mixed media it had to be. The results? Disaster after disaster 😂

Thankfully, as part of my Patreon subscription to Finnabair, I had access to an appropriate class to challenge me away from my safe colour palette. Not yellow but magenta and plum. Oh my! Thankfully some Prussian blue to appeal to my teal leaning. 

Night Sky Dragon’s egg

I was going to call it a midnight Dragon but discovered that has some video game connections 🤷‍♀️

So it is now a “Night sky” Dragon lol. 

My steampunk/craft friend brought one of those tourist gift painted eggs made in China. I know there are thousands of them but I quite like them really. So I kept the original egg so that I can put it back if I want.

I’ve just decorated the polystyrene egg by gluing fragments of lace to it then painting it with black gesso. 

From previous experience, I know that heating the polystyrene will make it shrink. While this isn’t great for some projects, I actually wanted to utilise it in this project as it actually makes it look a bit like lizard skin. Pretty appropriate for a dragon I think. 

So I ‘carefully’ heated the gesso dry. I stopped before it went to far.

I used iridescent paints and waxes to colour the egg. I gave the little glass case a quick makeover. I say makeover but I still made it look old and shabby. 

Goggle makeover.

As a steampunk, my goggle collection is reasonably vast and varied.  However, I don’t have a lot of money to get posh ones so buying cheap mass produced ones for around a fiver (£5) and giving them a wee makeover is how I get goggles for different outfits. 

These started out that way. They are plastic and were given to me by my steampunk craft buddy. (There is a “Before photo” at the end). 

I Started out with the idea of making them “dress goggles”. You know... keep them clean, smart, new and shiny looking. But after finishing them I realised that wasn’t very “me”. 

They looked cool but I didn’t really like them.  So I grunged them up with fake oil, grime and rust. I like them better this way 😂

I started by taking the goggles apart then painting everything with black gesso. I also painted the wee gears and the two little Finnabair frames with the gesso. 

Then I coloured them using Finnabair paints and a water mister. Let it dry and brushed over the highlights with silver wax. I also brushed silver over the goggle parts as well as some purple wax.

I reassembled the goggles and they looked cool. 

But... for me, there needs to be wear and ageing on them. So I added a few patches of rust and gave the goggles a wash of black watery paint. 

That did it for me. Maybe once upon a time, they were my dress goggles then came an apocalypse and now they have “lived some” lol

Steampunk inspired egg.

 I have had two big clear plastic eggs sitting in my craft room for two years...TWO YEARS 😲

But I never really got the inspiration I wanted to fill them other than another captured fairy. And I didn’t want to do that. 

Then, this year, Finnabair brought out new moulds 😍

The rusty pipes.. I love them SO much. Add to that the fact Finnabair also filled a large clear egg in a tutorial on her Patreon and I had all the inspiration I needed. 

Mine is nothing like Finn’s but I gathered the motivation from her inspiring project none the less. 

So here it is, my steampunk inspired filled egg. It is about 5 or 6 inches tall (I think). 

I think this would be appropriate to enter into the steampunk challenge over at SanDee and Amelie’s blog. 

Steampunk Easter egg.

I did this egg. I have to say it was really tricky working on a curved surface. I could t really work out my 

composition. I am so used to working out where things should go on a flat rectangle or square. 

But the good thing about doing it is I had to challenge myself. A new perspective. 

Actually the egg went through three stages. I kept finishing it and then deciding I hated it and sat back down to have another attempt. 

Still not sure it’s working for me and I can’t get outside for good light to take photos due to storms. 

If nothing else, it was a learning experience. 😬

I chose this colour pallet to fit with the art daily cafe mood board. Although, let’s face it, I take any opportunity to work with anything in a teal or aqua colour pallet when put together with metallics or rust....