Artistic Evolution, Steampunked

Almost a year ago my journal loving friends and I began the Artistic Evolution, another collaborative project that due to the varying sizes of the pages allows for some previous (and future) work to show through, and encourages an evolution from artist to artist.  For more detail about this process and lots of illustrations, click here.

A few days ago I received Val's fantastic book from Elena.  Val's covers and art are all about steampunk, and she requested that we stick with that theme if possible.  I love steampunk, so have no problem staying with it.

Neither did Elena, and her pages are full of gears, wheels, watches, and beautiful images from Graphic 45's Steampunk Debutante line.  My pages evolved easily from hers, and I took most of my inspiration from this portion of her work:

Here are my two facing pages.  You can see some of Elena's work behind the left hand page.  I used Tim's Weathered Clock die because it looked good with the gears from Elena's page visible behind it.



And here are the two pages separately:

I used DCWV paper with a steampunk theme for the backgrounds, but of course added layers of ink, stencils, masking, paint, modeling paste, etc. to what was already there.  I cut the Weathered Clock die from a background I'd made ages ago and never used.  The butterfly wing (yes, that's what it is) to the right of the clock is a stencil and I smeared modeling paste over it, then inked it when the paste was dry.

The steampunk gent is a Wendy Vecchi stamp on a coordinating art part, so it's very dimensional.   His hat got the patent leather look from Glossy Accents, and it is further decorated with a spring, a resistor and some watch parts.

Here are some close ups from page 1:

 

The second page has more gears and sprockets (mainly from Tim's idea-ology line), another art part from Wendy, some stamps from Oxford Impressions, and the edge treatment that the next artist will have peeking out from behind her work.







Wendy's watch art part was inked with pumice stone distress ink, then covered with rock candy crackle paint.  It was filled with various watch parts, embedded in a layer of Glossy Accents.  Some ball chain is glued around the whole thing.

My edge treatment is Tim's Iron Gate on the edge die, inked with vintage photo then covered with Glossy Accents (both sides, as both sides will show).  I punched small holes in the tops of the gate and strung thin wire from post to post, with a bit of spring in each section. 

As soon as I get to the post office, this wonderful book will be on its way to Lori in Missouri!  You gotta love a well traveled journal.