Altered Time

I have been on a look out for a clock for my art studio and came upon this gem for only $5.00. It was perfect for my style... old, grungy, steampunk inspired with sprockets.... so it was a must buy.

Decided it needed some altering. The main products I used for altering were... UTEE gold, bronze & black. I also used black gesso as well as metal tape. 

I first wanted to make wings which I covered chipboard with the metal tape, burnished it real good  and ran it through my Vagabond to die cut different shape wings, then ran it through once again my embossing folder "Sprokets". Wiped a thin layer of Rub & Buff Ebony over the highlighted spots on the wings to give it depth. 

Next was diecutting an assortment of sprokets and gears. I painted chipboard with black gesso and ran it through the diecutting machine. 

Then the fun part... I just love embossing. I used UTEE gold, bronze & black. Used Versamark and swiped random spots on the gears and applied the UTEE. Of course it setup bright and shiny but I wanted more of an aged look, therefore I took a wire brush ( you can use sand paper, or Tonic  Scratch Tool etc. ) and went to town on the gears in certain spots so not to look uniform. 

You can see by the pictures above the difference between the two textures... This technique is actually one of my favorites from Tim Holtz where he embosses metal pieces and then scratches away bits and pieces and it makes your object look distressed and worn. Of course I couln't scratch these gears because they were made from chipboard therefore the wire brush was perfect for the job. 

Then I decided the clock itself needed some embossing. I wiped random spots of Versamark and applied gold UTEE to the actual clock and heat set.

 Then it was time to embellish the clock... gears, chain, wings, and glass vials filled with copper mica, and gold glass glitter, and Ideology Pen Nibs were added. 

 Hope you enjoyed the post and I especially hope this inspired you to go alter something . 

xoxo Toni