Train Track Triptych

Hello all, happy Sunday to you!  Thanks so much for stopping by today... especially if you've done it twice - this is the second post of the day (the other's here)!

I've a triptych to share with you this time, inspired by the wonderful Artistic Outpost SteamPunk stamp set, with the emphasis on the Steam!  For work, I sometimes live in Stratford upon Avon and every Sunday during the summer, a traditional steam train sets off from the station there for enthusiasts to take a ride into the steamy mists of nostalgia.

I've been down to see it depart a couple of times (including taking my young niece and nephew), but even from my tiny little courtyard garden, I could always hear it chuff chuffing away, and then the oh-so-evocative whistle as it picked up speed.  It's one of the most romantic sounds, the sound of escape and travelling; the American train whistle does it too, calling you to vast landscapes and wider horizons.  So this is a triptych tribute to the "Golden Age of Steam".

First a front and back...

On the front you get a traditional vintage scene, and on the back a much more fragmented, abstract view of the steam locomotives, with tissue tape 'train tracks' cutting right through it.  

The Artistic Outpost stamps are delicious.  First I stamped some lovely circles from the Whimsical Melange set onto white paper.  

Then I did my favourite tissue paper stamping technique with the station and train (twice, so that I could have one going in each direction for symmetricality on the triptych), and stuck them over the circle background, nice and 'wrinklily'!  

I used a blending tool to add Vintage Photo, Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky DIs.  

I already knew the sentiment I wanted to add, a snippet of a poem by Hart Crane, so evocative... and (with my Words hat on) I just love those alliterative Ws, so I lined them up over one another to draw the eye, and therefore hopefully liven up the lips as you speak them.

 
To live up to the words of the poem, I added some additional puffs of steam by loading a paintbrush with white acrylic, and just a touch of mushroom paint on one edge.

The tops of the panels are cut using the Brackets On the Edge Die, and the gears are TH Idea-ology ones.  

I wanted them to echo the circles hovering in the ghostly background under the tissue paper, but with an even more engineering-y, industrial look.

On the reverse of the triptych I collaged torn pages from an old children's encyclopedia (another casualty from the massive house clearing that's going on in preparation for leaving the family home of 40 years).  

There was a double page spread illustration of a steam locomotive, so I made that my central image but broke it up across the triptych.

I stamped some more of the Whimsical circles, quite randomly, added some stencilled polka dots, and inked, all the time echoing the colour blending from the front side from browns at the base to blues at the top.  

I gave it a little spritz of Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls Mist to get a vintage lustre.

For the hinges, I wanted to create some "train tracks" running across the back of the triptych.  I used some Tim Holtz tissue tape, the calendar, which has the straightest lines of the tapes I've got, so making the best train tracks.









It also has something of a train timetable feel, as well as marking the years that have passed since the great steam trains ruled those tracks.  I stuck the tape to some kraft paper, inked it, and gave it a good spritzing with Perfect Pearls in Pewter and Heirloom Gold.

So that's my train track triptych tribute to 'the Iron Horse'... somehow travelling on trains these days just isn't quite the same.  I had such fun playing with these glorious stamps... you'll definitely be seeing more of them!!

Since I'm in Stratford for most of next week (no steam trains this time of year, sadly), I won't be able to do any crafting (aaagh!), but I should be able to catch up on some blog visiting.  Looking forward to seeing you soon somewhere in Craftyblogland!

I'm entering this in the following:
The Artistic Outpost September challenge which is Anything Goes with an AO stamp
Second post of the day, and second entry for the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge to Tape It Up
Hels Sheridan in her guise as the Sunday Stamper is inviting us Behind the Mask to use Masks or Stencils on our projects
I know it's slightly more Steam than Punk, but I'd like to offer it up for the Happy Daze challenge Steampunkery too



Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!
Owens Lee Pomeroy

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.
G.K.Chesterton