Anne and Paul's: Steampunking the Laptop!

I've been wanting to do this for ages! So, I've finally built up the courage to steampunk my laptop...and I've taken a few photos to show you all what I did.

I was inspired by some ready-steampunked laptops which you can buy. But I really fancied giving it a go myself. Good excuse to play with some of the gorgeous Vintage goodies from Chronology!

So, to start with, my little laptop:

(well, technically, netbook,. But never mind!)

I've cleaned off all the surfaces with computer wipes and left it to dry off.

Next up, the best bit, the shopping!!

I went a bit nuts with Chronology... and grabbed a load of gorgeous goodies for this project! The plan is to still have plenty left at the end to tuck away into my stash and use on men's cards or on vintage scrapbooks in the future.

So, packets open, and fiddling around with some layout ideas:

Like that second one! But then I decided I wanted a distressed background too. So out came the Tim Holtz!

And here is what I came up with. It's a coloured background made with various shades of brown (tea dye, vintage photo etc) and flicked with water and black re inker. The edges have been distressed with my trusty thread cutter tool! Which is totally not for distressing edges, but does a much, much better job than a file. It's easy to tear the paper with a file, this little gadget gives a nice even roughed up edge:

When it was ready to go, I used Beacons glue to stick the whole thing together and onto the laptop itself:

Now for the scary bit!!
I've used a cotton wool ball and some Artiste metallic gold acrylic paint and "dabbed" a distressed border directly onto the laptop itself:

It came out really well and I'm very pleased with the effect:

Ta da! Now, for the inside. I dug out some nice steampunky/vintagey peel offs and used a few more of the metal embellishments from the Chronology range. (Excuse the messy desk! Creative chaos again...)