Challenge 31 At Anything But A Card. . . . . . . . Balance.

Hello everyone. Hope your first week in 2014 is going well. It's time for a new challenge atAnything But A Card and this time the theme is based on the photograph below and one word:  Balance.


I had to think quite hard for this challenge! Eventually I decided to take the word Balance and use it in a fairly literal sense.  I could have used the colours, the shapes, the sea or a host of other starting points that this photo and the word conjure up. That's the wonderful thing about challenges at Anything But A Card- you can think as far outside the box as you like and as long as it's NOT a card and you reflect the theme in some way, then we are always thrilled to see what you come up with!

I couldn't get the image of something balancing out of my head so here's my little ATC which depicts balance as I see it:

I've used my favourite Oxford Impressions steampunk bird stamp and he's balancing on some 'rusty' machinery.

For the 'rusty' machinery, I used an old mirror fixing, two die cut card gears and a heart brad to secure them together. The rust was all achieved using DecoArt Traditions paints, their sand texture paste and some Andy Skinner Timeworn techniques.

An ATC was die cut and covered with part of a gelli plate print (made using DecoArt Americana and Traditions paints) then run through an embossing folder. To tone down the brightly coloured gelli print, some DecoArt Metallic Lustres were applied along with a little Treasure Gold to add a green tinge. Both hat and bird are stamped with archival ink onto white card then cut out. The hat was embossed with clear powder, decorated with some rusty wire and the theme word added using a label maker.

I wanted to make the bird look as if he was balancing on his perch. The rusty wire is used to help secure the foot on the 'machinery'.

I decided to colour the bird in a bright colour to make him stand out yet still tone with a similar colour used in the background.