steampunk?

The ATC swap theme over at Chocolate Baroque this month is steampunk - now this is SO definitely out of my comfort zone, and steampunk stamps are not in my   collection - though I admit to having the lovely CB  punk rose on the wish list - so I was somewhat stumped as to what to do. Thanks to the lovely ladies on the Wednesday chat session , ideas came in plenty - I ended up trying 2 of them out.
The quickest and easiest was to cover card with foil, run through an embossing folder and grunge up  - the only folder I had that approached steampunk was a Tim Holtz clocks one, so that was duly dug out. It embossed beautifully, but just didn't look right to me - definitely seemed to be something missing, so I tried again using dark grey coredinations card, which I inked and sanded down, then added a butterfly cut from the original foiled pieces using a  freebie die.                          
                              

The suggestion I liked best was simply to stamp something and grunge it up - now that I can manage! I remembered buying a set of mini stamps ages ago for the lovely tree images, and not using the rest .............I stamped the crackle and hessian texture stamps from mail art randomly across the cream card using SU crumb cake ink, overstamped with a script and the tunnel from mini scripts in early espresso ink, finally with the cyclist from curiosities in black versafine twice. A hefty smudge of vintage photo and black soot distress inks and some roughed-up edges to finish.
Not sure that either of them are really steampunk, but they're the nearest I'm going to get to it!

ATCs

Way  back in January I signed up to the ATC challenge on Chocolate Baroque - am ashamed to admit that this is the first month that I have actually got around to doing any! And even than I owe this lot to a WI promotions evening that was somewhat of a non-event - possibly due to the sudden outbreak of sunshine...................I had agreed to demo something stampy for the Arts & Crafts committee, and thought of ATCs as small, quick, and inexpensive (alright, downright cheap )  to give away to anyone interested. The theme this month was 'night sky', which simplified what to take enormously - believe it or not, I got everything into one small  box and one bag , which by my standards is definitely travelling light!
Inks used were tumbled glass, faded jeans, chipped sapphire  and black soot distress inks, midnight muse by Stampin up, and black versafine. Stamps from the new landscape and floral edges sets from Chocolate Baroque, plus a small CB tree stamp (can't remember which set it belongs to)

 and a very old Clarity stamp of grasses (so old that it is definitely yellow now). Those and a craft mat, card, sponges, baby wipes and a punched circle mask were all I took along with a few sample cards to display with some stuffed mice  (that's the next workshop the committee is organising - means sewing, so definitely not involving me).
 A few did get given away, haven't decided which two to send in to Mel for the swap - who knows, I may even do some more