Dressing up in Steampunk Style

Hi Folks, here's a sample showing over on the Chocolate Baroque Design Team Blog today. I'm giving a more detailed description of how I made it over here.

I love using these dress forms, as they are cheap, but look great once they are altered. I painted the base firstly with a coat of gesso, then a coat of acrylic paint and let these dry. I stamped some tissue paper with the images that I wanted to use, and coloured some of the areas with various shades of browns and oranges, using my Polychromos pencils as I know that these do not bleed when using Matte Medium. I cut around the images, and applied them to the dress form and the base, using Matte Medium, covering the top as well. This helps the tissue paper to disappear into the background fairly well.

I then applied a coat of beeswax, using a large brush. I melted this with my heat gun to smooth out any thick areas, and then let it set again. I buffed the whole thing with a duster, to bring up a nice shine.

I stamped a couple of butterflies onto brown card using copper EP, which I cut out and added to the project, using rusty keys for their bodies. I then made some flowers using metal and crinoline. I used the peony die to cut these out, and coloured the crinoline with Rusty Hinge Distress Stain. I embossed the metal shapes with an embossing folder, and then wiped the raised areas with alcohol ink to remove some of the colour. I fixed the layers together with some faux screw brads.

The last touch was to add some copper wire to the stem of the project.

I'll be back in a few days with another explanation. I hope you'll pop back! Thanks for stopping by, xx