An Altered Alice Clock

The theme at Altered Alice this month is hearts. It's a bit late for Valentines, so here's an altered clock for your delectation :-)

"it's heart o'clock"

The original clock is one of those £1.99 jobbies from a famous Swedish furniture store. After taking apart and removing the paper clock face, the shell was decorated with Adirondack alcohol ink and gold mixative. To get into all those nooks and crannies, I stuck my hand in a plastic bag to stop it getting stained with ink and used it to dab an inked felt pad all over the plastic.

"The clock"

Some hammered gold card is decorated with the same ink colour combination and die cut into various gears which are fixed in place at different levels inside the clock using glossy accents and pinflair glue. A weathered clock chapter ring is also cut from the same card, and lots of small hearts punched from the waste. The hearts can be seen decorating the clock hands and any remaining are glued in with the gears.

I have to confess to going through four coloured versions of the rabbit before finally settling on this one! This original John Tenniel illustration  is printed on white card before colouring with distress inks and decorating with Perfect Pearls for plenty of shimmer to match the rest of the clock. He wears the chapter ring like a garland, and has a hole punched in the middle to hold the clock spindle and all the hands.

"Alice"

Images from Indigo Blu's "Alice I" set are stamped around the outside of the clock in black archival ink.

"Rabbit"

Stamping with an acrylic block doesn't really work on curves, so I just hold the inked stamps in my fingers and bend them onto the surface.

"Pendulum"

This heart is cast from UTEE melted in a melt pot and poured into a heart-shaped cookie cutter. A length of thin chain is wrapped around the heart and a layer of gold UTEE added to embed the chain into the heart, leaving one end of the chain at the top. A sentiment is stamped onto the heart with archival ink. A jump ring is added to the free end and used to join a length of thicker chain, which is attached to the back of the clock. A few charms hanging from the chain complete the decoration.

Ingredients:

IndigoBlu unmounted stamp set "Alice I"

Adirondack alcohol ink: watermelon

Adirondack alcohol ink mixative: gold

Ranger archival ink: black

Cardstock: gold, hammered for diecuts & white, stamping for rabbit print

Distress inks: Barn Door, Antique Linen, Scattered Straw

Perfect Pearls: Gold

Adhesives: glossy accents, pinflair dimensional glue

UTEE: clear, gold 

thin chain, thick chain, jump rings, beads

I nearly forgot, here's a pair of earrings to match :-)

"Alice Earrings"

Entered for the following challenge:
Altered Alice - hearts

What to do with a Topper...

Visiting the Belfast Craft Show last October, I had a mad moment and bought some Hunkydory toppers and months later I am still trying to decide what to do with them. Taking one of the toppers, I started by looking for matching distress ink colours, and after a while came up with this design for a "coming of age" birthday card:

"Time"

Taking an A6 panel, the clock was stamped with white acrylic paint and dried with a heat tool. The panel was then decorated with distress inks using the wrinkle-free distress technique and splattered with water droplets before overstamping the clock using a "ghosting" technique with black acrylic ink (you take the stamp in hand, without an acrylic block, and just stamp part of the design). An A5 panel of white card was trimmed slightly then inked in matching colours. Both panels and the topper were matted onto black cardstock, then layered as shown.

"Clock"

A clock, hands and gears were die-cut from recycled cat food box, before dabbing with alcohol ink to colour. The gears and hands were layered and attached to the A6 panel with a screw-shaped brad.

"Washers"

When I asked Tom for a couple of washers he gave me a whole trayful, but I don't really think he expected me to use them all! They make great embellishments for this type of card. Finally, a couple of Hunkydory tickets were added and the Tim Holtz "time" sentiment stamped. I think this would make a great card for an 18th birthday.

Ingredients:

Hunkydory "Bygone Times" topper & tickets

Sizzix Bigz Tim Holtz dies: Gadget Gears, Weathered Clock

Distress Inks: Pumice Stone, Milled Lavender

Archival ink: Black

Acrylic paint: white
Adirondack alcohol ink: Gold mixative

A5 card blank

cardstock: black, white

screw brad

washers

Pinflair dimensional glue

Glossy accents

Entered for the following challenges:
CES Challenges - lots of layers, 3 or more
Hotshot Craft - one for the boys
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes

Altered Clock

Don't worry, I 'll be showing you some more cards soon, but first here's an altered wall clock.

"Altered clock"

This started out as just a very plain plastic clock. It was taken apart and the dial was removed then used to size a circle of glossy, white cardstock.

"Side view showing stamped decoration on outside of clock"

The clock and new dial were decorated with Adirondack alcohol inks & gold mixative, before stamping some Tim Holtz stamps with black archival ink.

"Altered clock"

The hands were dabbed with gold mixative. A small butterfly was diecut from a bit of saved cellophane wrapper to add to the secondhand (I used the thinnest clear plastic I could find so as not to add too much weight to the hand). The diecut was decorated with alcohol inks and stamped with Tim Holtz' butterfly in black archival ink to match the background, then fixed to the secondhand with a little glossy accents. It's fixed sideways and facing clockwise so that it flies in the right direction when the secondhand moves!

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show... anything but a card.

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

My first three ATCs

My work usually has lots of detail, but I wanted to take part in the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge which this week asks for an ATC, so I decided to make a set of three.

"Set of three ATCs"

The background papers are all from Tim Holtz' Lost and Found paper pad, which conveniently has some patterns in the right size for this format, the embellishments (including the dress form) are almost all from shrink-plastic, some inked and some embossed with gold embossing powder. Each ATC also features a Tim Holtz adage ticket with some additions.

"HOPE the rain stops!"

You don't normally see Tim Holtz' umbrella man with his umbrella down :).

"TRUST your time will come"



For all the struggling artists out there!

"LOVE life"

That's my philosophy anyway :) Whatever you do today, find five minutes to enjoy.