Hi, servus and welcome to my second post and project as a spotlighted guest at SimonSaysStamp's Monday Challenges this January! I am so honoured to be invited to guest with them this month and this week's theme definitely was just right up my alley: Rust it Up is the theme for this week's challenge and as the beauty of rust of all kinds is one of my favourite themes in general, I found it quite difficult for me to limit myself down to just a few products and items from my stash - but finally I made my choice and this is the result: I have altered a cardboard box I once bought at a well known Swedish furniture store. It is part of a four piece desk organiser and the other three containers still sit on one of my shelves, waiting to be turned into something more pleasing to look at ;) I've used the cool Voltage Sizzix die designed by my favourite dies designer - Tim Holtz! As it is a BigZ die it cuts through really heavy grey board - so my panel looks awesomely dimensional and turning it into a rusted and forgotten looking piece of tech gear was great fun! Here's what I did to create this panel: I started with die cutting all the pieces on the Voltage BigZ die twice from thick greyboard. I stacked the base and circle shaped elements, but only used a single layer for the hand and the screws and washers. I also cut a piece of acetate to size so it fit between the two circle shaped panels and coloured it using Ranger Caramel Alcohol ink and a piece of alcohol ink blending felt with the blending tool. I had also stamped a scale - using the stamp from Tim's "The Professor" stamp set - onto some white card stock that I had cut to size using one of the die cut window shapes as a mask to trace around so I could cut it to according size to insert it after blending its edges with vintage photo Distress Ink using the ink blending tool. This image shows how thick the two layers of greyboard are. The alcohol inked acetate was glued between the two upper layers. Using Distress Paint antiqued bronze by dipping a soft flat brush into the bottle I painted the voltage indicating device and then sprinkled Emerald Creek Baked Texture Chunky Rust and Patina Oxide here and there on the still wet paint. This way I didn't need any embossing ink to make the embossing powders stick to the project's surface. I added more heat embossing - this time using Ranger Verdigris embossing powder. Afterwards I dry brushed all the edges using black soot Distress Paint and a flat small bristle brush. To do so I dabbed a bit of Distress paint on my palette on my glass media mat, then only loaded the very tip of my brush with paint most of which I wiped off on a piece of kitchen roll before I used the left overs on the brush to gently brush that to the edges. The index hand was given a coat of barn door Distress Paint before I dry brushed its edges too and once that had dried I added a thin coat of Ranger Clear Embossing Powder. One of the bent shaped panels I had die cut was primed with a layer of black soot Distress Paint and then heat embossed using the Aged Silver embossing enamel from the Stampendous Frantage Embossing Enameling Kit. Two small sticky half pearls were used as rivets and given a quick brushing over with black soot Distress paint. Time to glue everything in place! Yep - that looked quite cool so far ;) This is a before image of the cardboard container I was going to alter. I took my finished voltage indicating device and rummaged my paper stash for a matching designer paper... ...which was a sheet from Tim's Lost and Found paper stash. It was cut to size and I used the container to measure the height and length of the strip I needed. I also added a finger's width to have an overlap where the paper edges would meet. Using Tacky Glue - as I had been using before - I glued the paper in place, making sure all the edges were neatly stuck to the box surface. To tone in the paper so it matched my voltage index even better I applied a layer of vintage photo Distress Ink around all sides. Afterwards I blended the edges of my box using a piece of Ranger Cut-n-Dry Foam and jet black archival ink. I had decided to add some affirmative quote to my desk organiser and picked one of the beautifully dimensional Tim Holtz idea-ology Quote Chips. It was toned in too using vintage photo Distress Ink and jet black archival ink around the edges. And because the quote chip tells me to use my wings, I also stamped the order "fly" onto the Aged Silver panel using StazOn black stamping ink and some Hero Arts letter stamps. Done! My new desk tidy for my pokey tools, bone folders and drills was ready to use! Yay! What is it that you are going to rust up to play along in this week's Monday Challenge at SimonSaysStamp? Don't forget - there's a fantastic to be won by one lucky randomly drawn winner! All the products I have used to create my project can be found in their online store (just click on the product names in my write-up to get taken to the product on their shop site). Good luck and hugs and happy crafting! Claudia xxx