Steampunk ATCs

Never heard of steampunk? Where have you been? Steampunk has been an art movement since around 1987 although I have to admit it did not come to my attention till it started to make inroads into the various swapping groups I'm a member of in the last 3 or 4 years. I suppose it was only a matter of time till it found its way into collage sheets and other Alpha Stamps goodies. You can find everything I used on my ATCs from Alpha Stamps here. I love the combination of vintage, mainly Victorian imagery with more modern futuristic and sci-fi elements and to his surprise John found me rummaging in the garage (where he keeps his stash!) for little washers, rusting copper sheet and other goodies which to my mind at least belonged with steampunk art.

At the moment (and you can still sign up till the 17th April) there is a Steampunk ATC Swap on the Alpha Stamps Yahoo group and even though I was only going to make 3, somehow I came up with 6 ATCs for this swap. In future posts I will also show you the pieces I made when we received the Alpha Stamps steampunk delights as part of the Design Team. One of the reasons I love being part of that team is that it's so much fun to see what's coming and to figure out what to do with it all.

I'm showing you 3 ATCs today with the promise of the other 3 in the very near future. The background on all the ATCs is the same, a fabric-paper collage in suitable rusty undertones and where I have used images from the Alpha Stamps Gauges sheet as well as tear-out diagrams from John's old Seamanship books. I had to wrestle these from him but as I told him, his sea-faring days are now a distant memory so what better purpose for these ancient tomes than to use them in my art! I also used these books for the text in all the ATCs. Don't ask me what Simpson's Rules are, I haven't got the foggiest! It just sounded good as did Principle of Moments!

By the way I spritzed the cardboard elements that can be seen in the top and bottom ATCs with metallic car sprays and to my surprise it did not only work but even looked great specially when they intermingled. I used bronze, blue and green. These sprays also originated in the garage despite the fact that to the best of my knowledge we've never had a car in any of these colours!

However better not to ask as that might start a discussion about my collections of paper napkins, buttons, beads, fabric, vintage postcards, vintage books and several other (as yes unknown to John) stashes!