What to do when your 'mojo' takes a break!

Well, the 'Mojo' has decided to seriously 'naff orf' this weekend....soooooo...what do I do to get it back??? Other than sitting at my craft desk for aaaaages trying to come up with some ideas....I decided to have a little clear out! To say that it lasted all of about five minutes is an understatement! lol....I had a pile of images that I had printed out at sometime or another for some project or another, that had one cut out for something or other....*rolleyes* (you know how it is) lol ... sooo while I was seeing what was there things just kind of seemed to 'fall together'! I must admit I just LOVE it when that happens!....


Anyway, I digress, The images are from  Joanna Sheen Victorian Romance cd rom, so I cut out my favourite ones and put them to one side, while I was tidying away the other pages of images, that done, I came to my 'box of bits'...which was full of diecuts and embellishments...blah blah blah...proceeded to find the Tim Holtz Alterations diecuts of the Winged Heart, The Bird and Cage and the Cogs and Gears, which had been cut from Ten Second Studio Art Metal in copper! I Also found some flowers I was going to use for another project, these were stamped using The Artisitc Stamper Tick Tock Flowers themeplate, and then distressed. I also used the Tick Tock butterflies from the same range (if you look REALLY closely you can see THE most cutest little steampunk snail!) While I was 'rummaging' I came across some little bare chipboard hearts, these were coloured using Twinlking H2o's , overstamped with the tick tock flowers then heat embossed with gold detail embossing powder,  some old playing cards, scrabble tiles and some ribbon roses!


Soooo, time to TRY and see what I can come up with this newly 'found' stuff! lol.....

1 blank 8 x 8 deep edge canvas, Which I washed over with water then sprayed using Glimmer mists, put aside to dry while I faff about with the other stuff. I adore that hot air balloon image so because I had a few of those I decided to do a wee bit of decoupage, I had some matching backing paper so I used the Denim blue Distress ink and distressed the edges, I have had those 'bubbles' for ages and because I don't really do a lot of decoupage they were stored away at the very back of the cupboard. I coloured the edge of the bubble using a gold marker, let it dry, 'scratched' it then rubbed over it with Archival black to distress it because it was just too 'new' looking, plus the fact that it would hide the glue when it was stuck down over the decoupage! I just added some ribbon roses and scrabble tiles to the image before it was all put together.

The rest of the piece just seem to fall into place really, i used a couple of fancy shaped metal brads for the flower centres, then stuck them down at the bottom of the bubble. The die cuts were just 'plain' so I used The ten Second Studio 'Dotted Wheel' tool to give them a bit of texture, a small wire brush and some Archival Black ink aged them up a little, The heart was made to look like it was riveted, just using the Ball and Cup tool, ( I was pleasantly surprised at the way that turned out actually)!

I just finished off the piece with the butterfly and the snail which were stuck onto the bubble and i then added some 'steampunk' watch parts here and there to match in with the cogs and gears theme!

Some close ups of the smaller pieces.....

Soooo there you have it.....What i did to find my 'mojo' again!

now this piece may not be to every one's taste but it just simply reminds me of ME and my brain at the moment! Suitably cluttered with a whole load of 'stuff, but I am thrilled to bits with the way this has turned out, seeing as it was an experiment! Mixing the old with new really work with this piece and I think Joanna Sheen's Victorian cd's really lend themselves well to the Steampunk theme!

So Thank you all for reading through this 'novel' of a post lol, and it just shows that sometimes when the mojo DOES take a break then so should you, go and do something else and while you are doing that more often than not other ideas come to mind, if not the don't worry, because I feel the harder you try to get it back the less chance it will do so! A bit like teenagers really, disobediant and defiant!! lol.

Take care everyone and thanks again for dropping by,

Jackie xx

p.s. my craft room seems to be in a bigger mess NOW than what it was BEFORE I started clearing it up ... *sighs*.... lol