Smeared Inks Throw Down No 2 Faux finish

 Well my blog seems to be like waiting for a bus recently, Nothing all week and then 3 turn up one after the other, So I hope you bear with me over the next couple of days. As always thanks for stopping by and a big welcome to my newest followers. It's great to have you here.
 Now a few weeks ago Smeared Ink started a new challenge on their forum for Design teams, called the DT Throw Down, this is open to any design teams all you need is a maximum of three people to take part in the theme that has been set, after the deadline the forum members take a vote for the best collection of entries.
 Over at Haunted Design House we jumped at joining in and we were lucky enough to have been voted the winners of the first challenge, as well as bragging rights we got to pick the theme for the next challenge.
 We chose Faux Finishes. If you follow the link to Haunted Design House you will see what the other two members of team HDH have created and of course we would love for you to stop by Smeared inks forum and have a look around and join in the voting, They are a great bunch of crafters and there is always something going on.

If you have stopped by before you may have noticed that I like to use faux finishes quite a lot. For this challenge I made a steam punk inspired book cover from one of the new range of Neil Walkers  Tando Creative book kits.
the top section of shaped chip board was thin enough to go through the diamond plate embossing folder from Tim Holtz and was given an acrylic paint technique I learnt from Andy Skinners Time Worn online course, the second layer of card is to thick so some craft card was cut to shape and embossed with the sheet metal folder from Tim Holtz and was given a Copper Verdigris paint technique from the Time worn course.I added the Tim Holtz key hole and book plate, and again gave them a a tarnished brass faux finish. I used one of Tims tickets and some crackle accents to finish it off.


All the stamps are from De Stempel Winkel if you have not heard of them go check them out, they are a firm based in the Netherlands and have hundreds of sets with pretty much every style you can imagine, stream punk, botanical, oriental, art deco, you name it they probably have it. A lot of the stamps can be bought individually as well as in a set, Jetske presses a lot of the designs herself, she also sells the inks and paper crafting essentials.The plates I have used are Mannen 1 and Nuts and Bolts.
 The Stamps were stamped with archival ink in black, to add the colour and distress I dabbed some blue and brown distress ink pads onto my craft mat and spritz with water, I then swiped my card through and ironed dry/flat again, I repeted this to get the colour intensity I liked, the very dark brown splodge is from the walnut stain re inker. Some eyelets were added to protect the covers over time and the O rings were also given the same tarnished brass finish.

The inside covers and back cover were covered with some design paper that fit the theme and have had a little distress inking around the edges. I have not gone mad here as I intend to add pockets etc in time and as the pages get added.
Ill be using it to collect pages, tags etc but more of that another time.

Thank you for sticking with my rather wordy post.
Hopefully we will see you over at the smeared Ink forum and remember you can see the rest of the HDH entries here.

Over at Sugar creek Hollow they are having an Altered State challenge.

Crafty emblies are having an anything goes theme this month.

The new challenge blog Left Of Centre are starting their 2nd challenge if you are a traditional crafter you can follow their theme or if you are a little left of centre it's anything goes ;)