Industrial Chic And Men/Boys. . . . . . . .

I have been wanting to join in at Dragons Dream Tag It On for some time after seeing their link on May's blog. Must admit to feeling a little intimidated as the work over at Dragons Dream is amazing but I decided that there's only one way to develop and grow and that's to have a go! Their theme this week is 'Industrial Chic' which was quite difficult for me as I had to improvise with the industrial imagery part of the 'recipe'. I don't have anything that fits this ingredient so I decided to tackle the theme from the only angle I had open. I had a stamp which shows the construction lines used to develop industrial type drawings - hope this is a good enough link! Cogs and vintage browns was a little easier to achieve even if cogs are not my favourite thing!

Today is another week over at the lovely Hel's Sunday Stampers and of course I can't resist having a go. The last two themes Hel's came up with suited me perfectly as I was already working on an appropriate piece. So this week the theme at Sunday Stampers is Men/Boys and I'm hoping that this piece will fit there too. I asked my nearest and dearest if he thought this piece was 'manly' and he seemed quite convinced so I'll have a go and link it to the Sunday Stampers blog - fingers crossed!

I love working with metal tape and card so thought I'd use this technique on my tag - again! The difference this time is that the girly colours have gone out of the window and are replaced by a very masculine palette. See what you think:

The elements used to make the tag.

The completed tag.

The 'flowers' were made from white card covered with metal tape and die cut. The flower shapes were further embossed and along with the cogs, were coloured with alcohol inks. The flowers were shaped and screw head brads finished the look. One cog shape was combined with a flower shape to create an interesting effect. I added the stamped clocks as an additional industrial element - on the first photo, you can see that I've also stamped some barbed wire to fit in with the theme.

The tag background was created by embossing metal tape covered card and coloured with acrylic paints to achieve a metallic look.

The clock images were stamped and inked. The cogs were created as before. Instead of ribbon through the tag I coloured a split ring with alcohol ink to match the other elements and attached a little charm from a clothing label. The key and screw head brad finish the look.
The 'headdress' on the stamped image was created using part of a cog and an off-cut from a floral die cut which was embossed with distress powder and then coloured with gold mixative. Underneath the headdress you can see the walnut brown distress embossing powder which is there to represent hair. Another screw head brad was used to finish the headdress.

I love this image! Hopefully, the 'industrial' element can be loosely acquired here: technical drawing (now often done on the computer using CAD software) used lines to help construct a range of shapes accurately. On this Lynn Perrella stamp image, the construction lines can be clearly seen on right of the image. I couldn't resist adding a little girly touch with the red lips which was added with distress marker. The face was inked but this was removed in the eye region and the 'cheek' circles - this seems to make the features really stand out.