Dapper Man Mixed Medium Collage (Work In Progress)

Here we go again with another great challenge over at Simon Says Stamp and Show! This weeks challenge? Show your handmade backgrounds! As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to share this piece which is a work-in-progress. I didn't really take note of the exact products and tools I was using, but I can give a general idea...

It's hard to tell from the photo, but this is actually done on watercolor paper that is 9"x 12". Did I use watercolors? Not a drop, but I really wanted to work with the texture of the paper.


You may recognize this dapper gentleman from the Steampunk Art stamp set by Wendy Vecchi... only he's bigger! To scale this image to the size of my paper I simply stamped the image on regular paper then scanned it into my computer, resized it in photoshop and printed it out. Voila! I first used vintage photo distress ink on him then I went over all the black parts of the image with a black oil pastel.
One of my favorite things to work with are real vintage book pages. Something about them just inspires me. Of course I am very picky about what books I will actually use for crafting as I am quite fond of old books and very sentimental like that. For the bottom right corner, extending in a tapered manner to the top right, I added torn pages that were distressed with vintage photo ink.

You can also see the addition of small bits of pages in the top left corner. I felt this helped create a cohesive look to the project. For the first layers of background I used various acrylic paints. I also used a dot background stamp from Hero Arts with acrylic paint to add- well... the dots. I used a lighter brown over the dark paint and a darker brown in areas where the book pages are.

The gears were created by layering book pages over Kraft paper and die cutting them using the Tim Holtz/Sizzix Gadget Gears die. I then stippled over them with metallic acrylics. I really wanted to create a sort of rusty look to them so I used copper metallic paint to enhance them.

Like I mentioned- this is a work in progress and I am definitely not finished. It's one of those projects I will probably work on randomly when the inspiration hits until eventually, one day, I just know that it's done.

As always

Angela