Hello everyone, my steampunk side has come out to play again this week with a very mixed media textured art panel featuring the lovely Ella, one of Donna's gorgeous new girls, as I was unable to resist her as soon as I saw her.

Here's what I did:

I took an 8 x 8 MDF panel and added a pattern roughly all around the edges with texture paste and the new cogs corner mini stencil. You have to be a little careful doing this, lifting up the edges of the stencil a bit in order to make sure the stencil doesn't end up in the areas already given a pattern. If you prefer, you can wait until the texture paste is nearly dry but I didn't bother as I wanted a grungy look!

I then used a palette knife and my fingers (very messy) to spread some texture sand paste in the areas not covered with cog pattern to add yet more lovely texture.

The next step is very messy but great fun as I added puddles of several shimmer and metallic paints (listed below) to a plate and used my fingers to paint the textured panel. Once the surface was covered, I let it dry then picked out the edges of the cogs with a tiny amount of dry brushed black to make the pattern pop more.

I chose a number of greyboard cogs and nuts together with a feather and a couple of butterflies and decided on the placement around the outer areas of the panel. I swirled several paints in shades of blue, gold and copper on the plate and coloured the embellishments by dipping them in the paint and drying them with a heat gun - this gives lovely textured bubbles to the surface.

White Mixed Media Paper
Palette Knife - I used my trusty Ranger Black Palette Knife Set
Black Sharpie Pen
Tim Holtz Clippings Stickers
Silicone Glue