Oh what a day, what a lovely day!

Over at Viva Las VegaStamps blog a new monthly challenge has begun. This time they are also pairing it with a swap hosted through their facebook group on their events page. I love trading ATC's so I definitely signed up for this one. The theme is STEAMPUNK and I let myself be inspired by words from their inspiration post like rusty, steampunk, mail art, pipes,vintage, metal,copper, gold, bronze, nickel, handles, diving, divers and more! The pictures below of the items I made is the result of the inspiration.

Stamps used Whimsical Diver from plate 1436 and the phrase "Oh what a day, what a lovely day" (from Mad Max) from plate 1473. Some really awesome stamps are all on the plate, but I wanted to put the focus on these two in my designs.

Each of my partners (and Dee from VLV store) will get a set like this.

Close up of the ATC: The background is made with distress inks Old paper, vintage photo and aged mahogany with a blending tool. Then I took this stencil from Dylusions and dabbed some more aged mahogany through it. I have masked the diver while doing this. Stamped the sentiment with Memento tuxedo black. The diver is then colored with promarkers and the piece matted on black card stock.

I then made a notecard with the same stamps. Background (yellow notecards) went through my cuttlebug with a gears and cogs embossing folder. Fter that I rubbed bronze, silver and copper pearl metallic rubs over the raised embossed parts to make it looked aged. The diver as well as the sentiment is stamped on gessoed and brusho'd kraft paper. Matted and lined with a black marker and outlined with a white gel pen. Then adhered it all with tape runners to the cards. 

I am pretty pleased with the end result! I think I might make another one to keep for myself, but hopefully my partners will like receiving this steampunk inspired set :) 

Needless to say that I am entering these for this month's challenge at VLVs Blog, so wish me luck :) You can still enter until the end of the month, so play along if you want to.

Hope this inspired you to get your steampunk hat on :)

ETA: It's totally amazing! I've been chosen as one of the July winners with this piece, huzzah!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

namasté