Altered Playing Cards, Week 19: Steampunk?

At Claudine's Art Corner for Week 19, the theme was Steampunk/Time.  As seems to be the case with most of these challenges, I had NONE of the requisite products.  But I had warmed my craft room, so was ready to take on this challenge.

That 's when I decided to experiment.  So I grabbed two colors of craft acrylics and a cheap paint brush

and proceeded to make a mess because the paint I chose had separated.  No wonder.  I got it at a garage sale years ago.

At least the black was good.  In fact, it had never been opened before.

Although I didn't have any of the cogs that Claudine had, or the dies to make them, I had similar looking masks.  And I had an idea of how to make these work.

I positioned the large gear on both playing cards,

then the smaller one on the black painted card only.  Using the now clean paint brush, I spread silver glitter glue on the card I painted black, and part of the mask.  Although I haven't added the glitter to the card on the right in the above photo, I applied it next.

When I removed the masks, I remembered yet again why I didn't like this product.  I have used these same gears on both paper and fabric in the past.  They simply don't work for me.   But this was a challenge, and I was not about to give up.  There wasn't much I thought I could do with the black card, but I felt I could rework the maroon card enough to make it acceptable.

That is exactly what I did.  I cleaned the masks (warm soapy water as directed on the package) and dried them.  Then I repositioned them over the original masked area and painted metallic acrylic paint over the glitter glue.

Please be aware, I am documenting my process through step-out photos, but not endorsing any products.

I was actually quite pleased with how the one on the right turned out.  Now it was time to rummage through my supply of recyclable watch gears and cogs.

For this card, I found three genuine pieces I removed from a large man's watch and named the APC "Be the best cog in the machine."

All of the other recyclable gears were unusable as they were, because they had too many protrusions on one or both sides.  That's when I decided on a quote I garbled from the internet: "Colors must fit together like cogs in a wheel."  That's not really the quote, but I took the part I thought was appropriate, especially for this rather uniquely colored APC.


Here they are together.  I was really stuck when I first saw this theme, so was glad I could go to my recyclable stash and find what I needed.  And no stamps were harmed or inked in the making of these two cards!!!  Please enjoy.