Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Steampunk Cornell Box

 This is my first attempt at making my own Joseph Cornell inspired artwork.

His "collection" boxes are so cool.  My theme (obviously) was Steampunk.  The background of the piece is a sheet of antique book photocopied and cut to fit.  I think it took 4-5 sheets total to cover the whole box inside and out.



The box is made from an empty cereal box.  Most of the items inside were either found or bought.  Info about the robot is below.  Lots of the gears and larger electronic-looking pieces were taken from an old broken electric pencil sharpener I took apart.  Best. Idea. Ever!


The robot is actually a mini wooden manikin painted black and dry-brushed silver.  You can get yours here.  His eyes are brass eyelets and the gears are tiny watch gears.


 This is the "lid" to the pencil sharpener turned upside down, the motor from the sharpener glued to it, a light bulb from home and copper craft wire.  Anything that needed to look "old" was painted either black or rusty brown and then I dry-brushed metallic paint over it to give it a metal look.  In the background are more gears from the sharpener.


 This is the circuit board from the pencil sharpener inside a little paper mache box lid.  I painted it all brass, copper and grey.  The clock hands were purchased form Michael's and the metal disc is another piece of the sharpener.  I added wires to hook it all together.


This is a small wooden spool wrapped in copper wire attached to a large plastic disc from the sharpener I painted rusty copper - to which I glued gears, wire, another even smaller wooden spool and a toy compass.  It was tricky to get this to stand upright, but after some fiddling, it worked.

Other materials I used:
copper brads on the outside of the box to look like rivets
other steampunk-like gears & stuff - purchased from Michael's
1/2" foamboard - I drew and cut out a couple of my own gears, painted them black, then dry brushed a metallic silver or copper over it.
Aleene's Turbo Tacky Glue (I LOVE this glue!)



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