Nemo, the steampunk tyre hubcap

On one of my daily walks to work, I saw this wheel alloy laying on the side of the road. I thought – what a great shape, perhaps I should use this as a base for a Mixed Media piece… I waited a week or so in case the owner should claim it but he or she never did – so one day I brought it home. It was dirty and oily so it needed lots of cleaning before it was ready to use. – Lena Stain shares the start of creating Nemo.

How many times do we walk past something that would make an amazing art piece if we gave it some love and care and unleashed our imagination on it? With all the arty products in our homes and the creative ideas in our heads there are no limits to what can be done with the every day things that we pay so little attention to.

Join us on a magic adventure into the nautical steampunk world with Lena and Tattered Angels. 

My vision was to make something nautical with this hubcap. I started looking in my stash to see what I had that I could use on this piece, I wanted something big in the middle. I had a pair of goggles that I had found in a hardware store earlier, I placed them in the centre of the piece… that was a good start. The Octopussy was also something I had in my stash from earlier. I created 2 extra tentacles in clay because I wanted these to stick out of the goggles on the top side – that’s how Captain Nemo was born:-) Now, all I had to do was start glueing down stuff on the hubcap. Both steampunk and nautical elements to bind the theme of the piece.

I used the following products:
Tire Hubcap
Tattered Angels Plain Jane Baseboard: Grass, Wave
Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist: Dragonfly, Patina, Key Lime Pie, Coffee Shop, Tokyo, Sugar Maple
Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam: Lime Cordial, Rustic
Tattered Angels High Impact Paint: Light Gold
Metal embellishments, Goggles, Clay Octopussy
Lace ribbons, Cheese cloth
Inka Gold: Old Gold, Old Silver
Finnabair Art basics: Heavy Gesso (black), 3D Gloss Gel (adhesive)
Aleenés Jewelry & Metal glue (adhesive for metal parts)

Glue down the goggles, octopussy and all the other embellishments. Place them as you see fit – see what works and what doesn’t and make your decisions that way.

Once everything was glued on, I painted most of it with black gesso. The shells and sides of the goggles were painted with brown acrylic color and the octopussy in blue – this so that the mists would show better.

The first colors I sprayed were TA Plain Jane Baseboard “Wave” and “Grass”. This was a great base for all the blue and green mists that I continued to color the piece with.

Here is the piece when it is colored with all the mists.
The main parts of the Goggles have been painted with TA Glimmer Mist “Sugar Maple” using a paintbrush and TA High Impact Paint “Light Gold”.
What still remains are all the emellishments that need extra coloring – this is so that they really pop.

To paint the embellishments, I used Inka Gold “Old Silver”, “Old Gold” and TA Glimmer Mist “Sugar Maple”. TA Glimmer Glam “Lime Cordial” was used on all the shells and also here and there on the googles. This gave the illusion of algae perfectly. I also used TA Glimmer Glam “Rustic” to give the goggles a rusty look, like it had been under water a while.

And lastly one more close up of the piece which I called “Nemo”.

Thank you for stopping by!

– Lena S. –

You can see more of Lena’s amazing creations by visiting her blog and Facebook page.

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