Girly Steampunk - an 18th Birthday Card for a Female Science student!

I've seen a few half-hearted attempts at girly steampunk in the mags lately, but feel if you're going to do it you might as well go for it!

"Girly Steampunk - card front"

Unfortunately, the person who asked me to make the card isn't quite as into steampunk as me, so I had to tone it down a bit anyway! I wanted to put "SOAR" in Vintage Market lettering at the top left and ended up with a boring "Celebrate Today" sentiment ("in case they wouldn't understand it"!!). Oh the sacrifices we make for our art :))) Still, I got my way with the inside - you'll see that later. First here's a little detail...

"18"

The silver mirri card used for all the diecuts was first decorated with alcohol inks, mostly with the "swooshing about on a craft sheet" method and partly with a bit of dripping straight from the bottle. Here, the numbers were double-cut from inked mirri card and deep purple cardstock and the two adhered together for extra depth on the lettering.

"Card front"

The wings were cut using a Spellbinders set and adhered to the Tim Holtz dress form. A couple of dress forms were cut from lilac cotton and attached to the front of the dress with glossy accents before decorating with lilac ribbon & lace.

"Necklace"

A "necklace" was formed from a row of tiny self-adhesive lilac gems. The rest of the front of the card was kept quite simple to contrast with the complexity of the inside:

"Card inside - Clock"

The main part of the card has my favourite concertina-card construction with layers of die-cut cogs and gears (all cut from inked mirri card) positioned on layers of mirri card with concentric apertures cut into them. The back layer is mirri card embossed with clocks and gears. On top of all the gears sits a Tim Holtz' weathered clock die cut. The hands are set to "18 hundred hours" and the centre of the hands is decorated with a large jewel brad.

"View of clock showing the layers of gears in behind the clock face"

Some of the drip-decorated card was used to cut gears, the extra colour helping the eye to distinguish the layers behind the clock-face.

"Top-view of card showing construction"

The real beauty of these concertina cards is that they squash nearly flat for posting, and are easily accomodated in a standard expandable envelope.

Entered for the following challenge:

Delightful Challenges bingo - add dimension, ribbon / lace, glitter/sparkle