Stars

Joining in three challenges with this mixed-media card: Our Mixed Media Moods (used the colours, blotches, tiles and stars on their moodboard), Paperartsy (I don't have blue infusions, but used Bister with gloss gel), and SanDee and Amelies steampunk challenge (new stash/forgotten stash, I used my new alcohol inks and a bunch of stuff that's been lying around for ages.

I had an old metal background in my stash. It's aluminium tape on card, and I've embossed it with a stencil from Designs By Ryn. A stencil doesn't give as deep impressions as a folder, but it's a way to get a favourite pattern embossed. I had originally coloured it with light green alcohol inks, and now I took out my new inks in denim, eggplant and slate... I went for a blotchy inky look, but it really didn't work out for me! Still need quite a lot of practice with those inks.

I created the tile effect with gloss gel on waxed kraft paper (Paperartsy). I sprinkled blue bister crystals on the wet gel and got some nice spotty tiles. Then I spritzed with a bunch of sprays, bothe mica and not. Both the paper and the gel resist the colours, but ... it just works anyway. I dried the sprays with my heat gun, and tore a piece of suitable size.

I sewed together my papers and some metal stars that I've dug from a trash bin (there's a metal-company near us, they make lanterns with star-shaped openings... and throw away the  cutout stars!). I decided to sew the stars in place, perhaps gel medium would have worked too, but I think this is quite cool.

I twirled the twine several times wondering how I could get it to work without bulging the card. This was the best I came up with: pieces of corrugated cardboard so there is space for the bundle of twine. I laid this on my card base  under pressure for a while before adding the dimensional Finnabair stars.

Here you can see the sewing over the stars and the way the heatgun boiled the gloss gel.

I like how the torn kraft papers give light frames to the otherwise dark surface :)