Garage Gears Meet Steampunk Grunge. OK, I am going to be totally honest here. I bought the Geared Up Garage Bundle as part of my Pre-Order from the Spring Summer Catalogue against my better judgement. When I first saw the stamps and dies they did not make my heart sing, which generally is a requirement before I buy any products. BUT, I then realised that I was concentrating too much on the stamps and not looking at the dies. These are AMAZING. Back in the day I was heavily into both Steampunk and Grunge. Secretly I still am.

The dies are, as I have already said, simply amazing and I LOVE them. There are so many of the cogs to play with, you can get really carried away. I thought I would use my first ‘play’ with them to do some layering of embossing powders. This is a technique I have used before, but not for many years. It is so easy and, frankly, you can’t go wrong. Now that we have Black embossing powder in our Product list, it does make getting the Grunge look so much easier, so I used this with all of the metallic powders to build up my Metallic Grunge.

All I did was rub my Versamark ink pad in random patterns over a piece of Tranquil Tide Card. I added one of the metallic embossing powders, or the black, as the mood took me. One point that is worth knowing is that the black is VERY Black if it is the first layer used. If you add black over other embossing powders it melts into the existing powder, adding grunge rather than black. I kept going with the layering of embossing powders until I had the look I was after. Although the final piece does not have much of the Tranquil Tide still showing, covering it all was not part of the plan.

It was then a simple case of die cutting all of the cogs from the embossed piece and then layering them up with Dimensionals. I used the Patterned Paper as the background for the cogs as it has a subtle self pattern. Layered on Basic Gray and Crushed Curry (colours in the patterned paper) for a great male card. And why did I use Early Espresso for the stamping? Because it gives an almost black image. Perfect for Steam Punk and Grunge work. Some of the items I have listed will not be available until 3rd January, but do remember to take a proper look then.

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Dimensions

Standard A6 Cardbase

Patterned Paper Mat – 5-5/8 x 3-7/8” (14.25 x 9.75cm)

Second Mat – 5-1/2 x 3-3/4” (14 x 9.5cm)