Steampunk Clocks Mirror

Today I made good progress on my steampunk mirror, with all the embellishments completed. I applied the pumice gel medium to give the rusty texture to the frame.

I did a mock-up of the frame first, with all the embellishments laid in place, and I drew round them to show where they would be. I then applied the coarse pumice acrylic gel medium to the spaces between them, and a little around the sides of the mirror frame, and left it to dry. That’s the worst  of these mixed media projects – waiting for different stages to dry when you’re as impatient as I am to get on! I gave it a bit of a blast with the heat gun but I had to be careful not to get too close or I risked cracking the glass of the mirror.

Using Pinflair glue, I glued down some of the embellishments – the Friendly Plastic ones which I have rubbed with patina Rub ’n Buff. I would have preferred to use hot glue, but of course this would have melted the Friendly Plastic, so Pinflair it had to be, with its accompanying waiting game as it takes ages to dry! These embellishments received the same “rusting” treatment as the background. While the pumice gel medium was drying, I laid the rest of the embellishments in place, to show the final layout of the design.

The charm would be attached with a short length of chain, and a “real” screw and a tack – there’s got to be some authenticity somewhere on this project!! (Perhaps one day I’ll make a frame for a real, working clock…)

I didn’t have any jump rings the right size for the charm, except one silver-coloured one, so I coloured it with alcohol inks and a bit of Treasure Copper (like Rub ’n Buff), and used that to attach the chain to the watch charm and gear wheel. The chain came off a vandalised cheap necklace I bought at the village fete. I am going to get some more dull bronze coloured chain for this sort of thing as I haven’t got an inexhaustible supply!

Here is the frame with its coating of rust-coloured acrylic paint.

When I did a mock-up with the other embellishments, I felt that some of the ones I’d already stuck on needed to stand out a bit more, so when the paint was dry I added a bit of Treasure Gold to some of the gear wheels and painted the clock hands with a mixture of equal parts of iridescent gel medium, Dark Blue and Black Pebeo fluid acrylics to create a blued steel effect. I didn’t want to overdo this, but just form more of a visual bridge between these embellishments and the much bolder ones added at the end.

On my rust ATC sample I also added a touch of copper metallic acrylic paint and a tiny amount of Treasure Copper, and I did this on the background of the frame as well, as it gives a nice lustre.

Here is the finished project. Grungey enough???