Speed Dial

"Are these any use to you, Auntie?"  

Was asked that question and handed a couple of gears and chain from my nephew's friend's motorbike that he had stripped down.

Needless to say my answer was an absolute 

YES PLEASE!!!!

Can barely lift the largest of the gears but where there is a will etc.,

And as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted it to be a clock

Put off doing it for ages and ages for fear of "ruining" the parts

But then decided that had they not given them to me then they would have languished away in the corner of nephew's garage and be lost ... 

So, yesterday was The Day and I so enjoyed doing it

Called it Speed Dial

Speed - motorbike

Dial - clock

Clever, huh!?!?!?!?!

I KNOW it is not hanging centrally!!!!

I did not want it to

VERY much ... "left a bit ... bit more ... bit more" adjustment went on

So, off-set it is!

It is all very much more 3D than shows in the photographs

I am hopeless at photographs

Had to work hard on  NOT using my safe, preferred colours and actually had out the browns, teals, greens &  blues and the little pots of rust paste and think I would actually like it more had I stuck to those colours but decided to really push myself and use colours I rarely, if ever, use

Needed help with this from hubby as it is so heavy!

Got him to wire the chain to the largest gear

Raided my box of broken watch parts - the sort of box you keep to rummage through but never use

Parts that are beautiful just the way they are

VERY hard to add them - but needs must!

Ingredients :

Wonderful nephews & their mates whom give you fabulous parts to play with

Prima Marketing (Finnabair) 

Art Basics :

Heavy Black Gesso

3D Matte Gel : Heavy Body Gel : Soft Gloss Gel
Art Extravagance :
Graphite Texture Paste

Art Alchemy Acrylic Paint :

Metallique Black Velvet : Opal Magic Violet Green

Art Ingredients :

Glass Glitter - Pitch Black

Micro Beads - Berry

Sweet Poppy Shimmering Silver Acrylic Mist

*** EDITED 28 June ***

Was never happy with the colours of this
Had it on the wall for 4 months now but could put up with it no longer
What on earth was I thinking using purple & silver?!?!?!

Went against ALL the advice to leave well alone
and tweaked it 
Wanted it to look like it was still oily - as if from the garage floor (which it was, of course)
Much happier now!

Colours added over the dreadful purple & silver were:
Art Alchemy Acrylic Paints : 
Metallique Black Berry : Metallique Steampunk Copper
Metallique Midnight Sky : Metallique Dark Velvet
Metallique Emerald Green

Oh, I don't mean the purple & silver were dreadful colours - just my choice of them for this project !!!!!

Denim dreams

Ok, it was supposed to be a dream

but turned into a nightmare

well, kinda

in the grand scheme of things it is just a canvas 

and a bit of time spent messing around 

so a disappointment rather than a nightmare perhaps

I was totally inspired by Finnabair's denim journal and knew I wanted to stick a piece of denim to a canvas

that was the easy bit & as far as I got

worked on it for two days then lost my way with it last night

hated it

knew what I wanted to do but no idea how to achieve it

just "doing it" wasn't helping

sat staring at it for a long, long time

sat staring at all the pots of gel and paste

inks and paints

not a clue!

but really should have by now

so had a mini-meltdown on FB

and encouraged by wonderful friends approached it afresh this morning

taken all day to tweak it

paint it out

tweak some more

but finally figured enough was enough and can do no more

can see so, so many errors in it

but ... sit down for this folks ...

don't hate it anymore!

The denim is actually dark blue but shows almost black here

If it photographs any better tomorrow in the daylight then I will pop back and edit this post

note: have popped back and edited
replaced original large photo' to show better colours
but have left the close-up shots 

INGREDIENTS:

Stretched canvas : Piece of denim

Black Archival Inkpad

Tim Holtz Flourish Stencil

Stamp from Finnabair - no idea what it is called

Art Basics (Finnabair / Prima Marketing) 

White Gesso : Soft Gloss Gel: Heavy Body Gel : 3D Gloss Gel

Art Ingredients (Finnabair / Prima Marketing)

Mica powders : Bottle Green, Green Opal Magic, Lilac Opal Magic, Deep Water, Purple, Frozen Lake, Teal

Glass Glitter : Midnight Blue

Micro Beads : Berry
Melange Art Pebbles

Art Alchemy (Finnabair / Prima Marketing)

Metallique Acrylic Paint : Deep Water, Vintage Rose, Pink Blue, 

Silver Spoon, Violet Green

Ranger Distress Spray Stain

Broken China, Stormy Sky, Evergreen Bough, Dusty Concord

Wilted Violet, Faded Jeans,  Bundled Sage

Perfect Pearls Mists

Blue Raspberry, Grape Fizz, Mint

Miscellaneous

Prozac, Jack Daniels

WOYWW 400

What a milestone!!!!!

Well done Julia - our Head Desker and esteemed (and much loved) leader over at The Stamping Ground who came up with the idea of all us crafty bloggers sharing our workdesks each Wednesday

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday - get it now?

So, what is on my workdesk this Wednesday?

Chaos

that's what

A departure from my normal way of working as this particular project needed a different approach 

Needless to say I will avoid such a different approach in future and go right back to how I prefer to work

(ie: gesso'ing everything once stuck in place and none of this faffing around painting it first!)

You can just see daddy's hand as he looks at a magazine whilst having his coffee and two Malted Milk biscuits on his daily visit

The telephone was rescued yesterday from Great-Nephew Henry (two in March) who helped himself to it from the stand thing and proceeded to wander around with it to his ear chatting away in his own, oh so cute, developing little language

Eventually I realised I could see the display illuminated and could hear odd beeps - he had obviously managed to press a button or several

Just hope now he was not connected to someone in China

or, love this thought - trying to sell a boiler upgrade to someone

Would love to blog more on each of our special WOYWW days but only do so when I know I have the time to return any visits to my humble little site

But could not miss this most wonderful milestone

THANK YOU dearest Julia

for all the friendships forged here, support and sharing of not only crafting and art but the roller-coaster that is life

Happy 400th WOYWW fellow bloggers!!!

xXx