Steampunk, Halloween Or Steampunk Halloween – Guest Hosting at Art Journal Journey October 2025

I’m so excited to be Guest Host over on Art Journal Journey again for the fourth time. It would have been the fifth time if I had been able to host last year but unfortunately I had to drop out due to those pesky health issues (and yes I am still on crutches!)

My theme for this month is Steampunk, Halloween OR Steampunk Halloween.  

Today’s Art . . .

To introduce the theme, I have created an art journal page that features all both Steampunk AND Halloween (and also cats because why not!)  For this month of October I am using this junk journal made from amazon packaging.

After I had made my journal, I started on my first page (this one).  I covered the whole page with the spiderweb design tissue paper, and while it was drying, I began making my elements.

I love this steampunk animal stamp set so I knew I had to use them for my theme this month. Who knows, they may turn up again later on in the month!  I don’t think it’s very obvious but each of the stamped images were heat embossed using dark embossing powder.  I also embossed some mixed media paper using this cool alphabet embossing folder which I highlighted using some gold and copper wax.

The idea for the page was beginning to take shape but I needed something for the animals to hide behind, so I drew some pumpkin shapes on this Halloween paper and tried to make them look like pumpkins.  The paper is covered in these black spiders so now it looks like the pumpkins are covered in black spiders – maybe not such a good idea to hide behind those pumpkins after all!

Here follows a closer look at each of the Steampunk animals…

Behind and around each of them I added some of the embossed card.

Some grungy steampunk-looking dials and gauges and plates.

And also some grinning “evil” pumpkin paper, so it looks like the gang are in some hot water now – evil pumpkins in the back, big black spiders in the front!  Will they be able to escape?

Final touch was to add the Steampunk Halloween title to the page using these great typewriter key letters which I glued on to more of the orange pumpkin paper to help them stand out a bit better from the black background.  Some of the gauges and plates are attached to the page using copper brads.  The two in the centre can be removed to allow the elements to swing out of the way when the page is folded to avoid damage when the journal is closed.