Steampunk fairy

Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a spotlight on Steampunk or machines.  Well until I set to work on planning for this challenge, I had never really done anything at all like it.  From other things I have seen around the web, I knew cogs and modern type machines made in a Victorian style was the key and I was a bit wary of how to start.  Luckily I stumbled across some digi stamps from Delicious Doodles and bought a few to have a play around with and I think I can safely say I am a little hooked on darker things at the moment!  As I said in a previous post, I like gothic styles and the steampunk genre fits in quite nicely I think.

I started by colouring the image in with promarkers, aside from the skin tones I really limited myself on colours to red and greys and a touch of green for the rose leaves.  I wanted to keep her skin pale and interesting so have only lightly shaded it.  I have used a black polychromos pencil to add shadow and make it pop out a little more.  Directly behind the main image (which I trimmed) is a piece of core'dination paper, embossed and sanded gently to bring the red from out of the depths of the black.  I have a few embossing folders which I rarely use, but core'dination paper is fab for making use of them.  The panel behind is some black and white design paper from my stash.  I am not sure what make it is as it didn't have any labels, but I bought it from Carole's Crafts.  Behind that I simply used a scrap of black lacy material stretched over card and a broad piece of black satin ribbon to continue the black and white theme I seem to have going on here lol

So what's the steampunk feature?  The cogs of course!  I cut them out from a template and coated them with aged metallic Perfect Pearls powder, spritzed and battered away with the end of the powder brush whilst the powders were still damp to create a distressed aged metal effect.

I followed the sketch at Hanna and Friends for this card.