Princess Steampunk dreams with the Dragons

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven, friends and followers! It's been a busy time here at the Magpie's Nest with our daughter's internship taking her off to Azerbaijan next week and our son settling into a new job! Also I've been creating art dolls with Mary Chadbourne over at Artful Gathering. Time moves on, though, and once again it's time to dream with the Dragons over at Dragons' Dream TIO. I'm still loving the beautiful tags people created for brown and the letter 'h'. Soon we will be announcing the Dreamboat 3. Right now it's time for the new recipe, which is brought to us this week by the amazing and talented Gabrielle who has chosen 'Cogs and the letter P'. Please do join us by linking your tags to the Dragons' Dream and remember to include at least one real stamp on your tag. For inspiration hop across to see what the talented Dragons and this week's guest designer have created. I found this challenge incredibly - well - challenging!!! I thought I didn't really have any cogs! Then I remembered a Lynne Perrella stamp I have in which the lady has very unusual hair that might just be comprised of cogs! Here is the tag I came up with! What an amazing brain that cog hairdo and phrenological head must be covering!

 Talking of incredible brains, I was really inspired by Liesbeth Fidder who is guest designer over at PaperArtsy this week. I love her techniques and this time I was keen to try out her 'peeled paint' effect. This along with the cogs seemed to say 'Steam Punk' to me - a genre which I like very much, but which I've never really felt was in my 'comfort zone'. The letter 'P' just had to be Princess, but with a difference, Princess Steam Punk!

I started with a Jumbo tag and a blend of these three colours: Mermaid, Bora Bora and Elephant. I went with the same colour for my top coat as Liesbeth - Cinnamon. She explains the technique over on the PA blog here.

My tiles are created from card painted with Stone Opaque Fresco and then the Translucent Yellow Submarine. They are covered in Clear UTEE and edged with Aged Copper Frantage. I added a little resin bird painted and accented in Sapphire Treasure Gold. He holds some blue painted wire in his beak - no doubt bringing it to help the Steam Punk Princess in her next invention in which curly wire is a most important component!

The rusted Prima mechanicals also serve as cogs in the Princess Steampunk's remarkable invention. I imagine the Princess rather like the brilliant Ada Lovelace, daughter of Annabella Milbanke and the mad, bad and dangerous to know, Lord Byron. She was not allowed to specialize in Poetry lest she turn out to be as 'wicked' as her father, but she did become a nineteenth century mathematical genius instead and she is often referred to as The First Computer Programmer because of her work with Charles Babbage on his 'Analytical Engine', the very first computer! Compared to our laptops, Ipads and Smart Phones it probably does seem like Steam Punk; but to think none of the cutting edge technology we enjoy today would have been possible without it! The Grunge Paste writing - from a ledger stencil could represent the Princess Ada's  jottings as she works on her latest invention! I should like to link my tag to the PaperArtsy Challenge here this week. Thank you so much for stopping by and taking a look at my Steam Punk dream. I shall be back soon, I hope, with my next Art Doll. And she is also a dreamer!