1st Place, Professional Mixed Media;
The Muse’s Kiss (Peg Laflam Award)

I’ve come to love the Steampunk genre. What’s Steampunk you ask? Well, it’s a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy, which incorporates the Victorian Era along with technology and designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.

With the idea of creating a sampler, I searched through my stitch books and online references looking for stitches and techniques that I thought best interpreted what Steampunk meant to me. From there I knew I had to include gears, old keys, a lock, a timepiece, antique charms, beads and a Rhodes-wrapped gem and gear. Thread colors were important and the Victorian Era color schemes seemed to fit best: hunger green, burgundy, antique gold, copper and bronze.

Adding copper and handmade paper were next on my ‘must include list’. I pushed copper sheeting through my crimper twice and came up with the heart. Then added handmade paper, which I tea stained and rubber stamped with a scientific looking light bulb.

To pull it all together, I chose an antique colored mono canvas.