pastel steampunk

 This was a bit of a mad idea (for me, anyway!) - a heart-shaped hanger I found in my local craft store. I painted it with white gesso first, the brushed the edges with emulsion paint, using a couple of those little tester pots - mine even came with a brush included.  I used mineral mist and gentle lavender, as I thought I would try pretty steampunk instead of grungy.
Once the paint was dry, I used the studded lattice stamp and a grey ink to stamp the background, then added the small butterflies from steampunk butterfly in dark blue ink. I stamped the butterflies again, once onto a sticky label and once onto card, and fussy cut them out.
The sticky label one went on the top butterfly, the card one on the lower one. A lavender ribbon replaced the string hanging loop to finish.

The Country Market that I bake for is held at a local ex-servicemen's club, and they have far more beer mats than they can use from the breweries, and I was given a whole pack of them. So four got transformed into posher coasters.
White gesso again, then the blue and lavender paints as before, but this time the background was stamped using the cogs stamp. The butterfly was stamped onto the mat again, then again onto sticky labels, fussy cut out and glued over the original image - this way you have the antenna from the original stamping and don't need to try to cut them out. I found that the very textured surface of the mat didn't lend itself to a detailed stamp like the butterfly, and sticky labels were a much better solution.
I glued felt over the back of the mats to hide the original advert - not too sure how well they will stand up to use, suspect they will really need a coat of a matt varnish to last at all, will find out over Christmas!

thanks for reading, and have a very happy Christmas with lots of crafty goodies