Dances with the subconscious

While more copies of Steampunk Fissure magazine are printing, I'm creating new mixed media collages using beeswax en caustic to replace those I sold at the art show and on Etsy.  This appears to be evolving into two series. The first is  something akin to the seven deadly sins, but not quite.  So far the titles have included "Secret," "Temptation," "Twist of Heart and Soul," "Seek", "Seduction," "Mystery", "The Crow," "The Passion to Exist".
The Steampunk series so far includes "Steampunk: Into the Aether" and "Alchemy."

They are dances with the subconscious.  While there are various steps in my process, very few are planned.  I start out with a panel of art or mat board and then choose a vintage photograph.  The photograph elicits emotions which cause the free association of other images, some relate to botany, to nature, others to writing or love.  It's usually only half way through a piece that I notice a them.  By the time I reach thee stage of adding the 3-D ephemera, I have a direction, a guide, but still no set rules.  It's only after I've completed every step except for the title, quotes and gold leaf that I really know where I was going.  It's a gamer, perhaps a dangerous one because it leads to exposure of the hidden, vulnerability in what I share, but the process is so powerful, I can't stop making them.  I could edit myself, do the more socially acceptable styles of art, but that would water down the experience - and the experience is what I'm after, the art which results is gravy.  
These are the various steps. I often stop mid point, work on other pieces, go to bed in that halfway place additional concepts pop into my head, mini aha experiences and I jump up to search for items in my stash.
I start with laying down the vintage photographs on colored art board or mat board, adding vintage ephemera and postage stamps in addition to contemporary Graphic 45 papers, making the embossed papers using Tim Holtz embossing folders and a Cuttlebug, lathering on the beeswax, adding the metal and paper embellishments (Tim Holtz, K & Co., 7 Gypsies)  and found objects, (many I find in gutters as I walk or in the parking lot at work), researching and hunting down the quotes to go along with the main word or title, painting on the pigments, brushing on the Perfect Pearls, complimenting the piece with paper flowers adding the gold leaf (the most tricky process) and adding the frame of ribbon for hanging.  I really like the ribbons hanging the best since it harkens back to the Victorian method of hanging art.