Curiouser and curiouser!

I have been busy on eBay recently. I haven't been able to get to some of my favorite junky haunts so eBay has to be my stand in. I won a bid for a lot of clock faces. They arrived Monday and they were delightful. No idea what I want to do with them but that has never been an issue before. One of the pieces is 16" across with a pearl finished clock face and marked "Made in West Germany". The cool thing about this clock face is that it had a hinged frame attached to it with the bubble glass still in place. This got me to thinking......

a couple of months ago I purchased some collage sheets from my favorite Etsy seller Altered Artifacts  an Alice in Wonderland Articulated Paper Puppet Theatre. Three sheets of wonderful full color images from the John Tenniel illustrations.

I added some other embellishments that I had in the studio. A miniature glass bottle with a cork, a gold key, an interesting watch face that I liberated a while ago from an ugly watchband, and some paper flowers.

I am almost finished with the piece. I am working on making a stem  for the top with a ring and a chain so it will hang on the wall and look like an over sized pocket watch of "Wonderland"  I am kicking around ideas for a watch fob to hang from the chain. Tea pot? Key? Top Hat? If any of you have an idea leave a comment. I am open to suggestions!

Close up of "Curiouser and curiouser!"

Oh Dear! Allice has gone missing again!

"It's Half-Past Four, Time for Tea and Alice has gone Missing! Oh Dear! Where can She be?"

This Steampunk thing has me fascinated. I love the gears and watch faces and keys and all of that other gadgetry.So I can use up a lot of the junk I have been collecting over the years into something quite interesting.

My Very Dear Friend Inka, at Altered Artifacts sent me her Steampunk collage sheet to play with. I had just returned from a successful foray into my favorite thrift store with this wonderful vintage antiqued brass frame with original bubble glass. the glass is so old it has some wonderful flaws in it- I love rolled glass! The frame is stamped "Made in Italy" on the back which makes it even better!

The background is an original piece made by my talented sister Cecelia Comito - she used acrylic paint and gold leaf on this "fabric paper" and then different found objects to create texture in the wet paint.

I chose two pieces by Inka one of them from her Steampunk Collage Sheet available on Etsy. The little girl with the top hat and wind up key holding what appears to be an over sized fork in her hand. The other piece I used from Inka is "Alice's Tea Table" which she has posted on her blog as a freebie. ( make sure you check her blog thoroughly she has many wonderful free downloads for you to use!)

I also receive in my inbox twice a week emails from Dover Publishing with free download-able design samples. I have a file on my desktop dedicated to these wonderful images! That is where the old Bi-Plane and the tea cup came from. I hand colored these images with my artists watercolor markers. These markers create a watercolor look without the messing around with paints and brushes. The rest of the images in the piece are various stickers that I have in my collection.

Putting the Tea Table together in such a way that it would appear 3-D in the frame was a challenge. I had to take it apart and trim it 3 times to get it to fit just right. I also wanted the tea cup and airplane to stand out a bit so I used a piece of double stick foam on the back of them. The clock on the wall is from an old watch. I used this one because it is marked Victoria Rhein and I have set it to read 4:30.