Getting my Crafting Mojo into Gear, Finally !

I started this project with an idea of a time theme, plus I wanted to use this Vintage Numbers rubber stamp set which the recipient gave me for my birthday last year. I borrowed the Tim Holtz Gadget Gears from my good friend Lena because they were masculine and were the closest thing I could think of to clock mechanisms. Before long I was turning the gears to represent "turning 60" and had a little swing out mechanism for the sentiment.

If you want to see how the gear mechanism works, I took some "work in progress" shots as well. The top gear only needs to spin around so it only needs a small hole (ignore the fact that there are 2 small holes the lower was a mistake - the gears were too close together and wouldn't mesh), however the bottom gear needs to move the sentiment out so needed to be a bigger hole so a bigger lug could be used to increase contact between the gear on the top and the sleeve underneath bearing the hidden sentiment.

The larger hole in the card top was cut using a spellbinders circle. Because the lug which joined the top gear and the bottom mechanism needed to be cut from a thicker material I searched through all my bigz and original dies to find a circle which would fit and cut this from foam board.

One other thing - the whole in the gears were too big so I replaced the centre piece in the gear and drilled a smaller hole in this with my Crop-a-Dile.

To facilitate the turning mechanism, I mounted the whole card top onto the card base with mounting tape, being careful to leave a gap for the swing out mechanism.

I was really happy with the background which I created using Red Pepper, Caramel, Butterscotch and Gold Ranger alcohol inks and overstamped with the clocks collage from Non-Sequitur Time and Space, so you can imagine my dismay when I reached for what I thought was the Glossy Accents to glue something down and picked up the alcohol blending solution by mistake. Instead of pouring a small amount of glossy accents onto an embellishment, a flood of alcohol solution came out all over my beautiful background.

Note to self - don't keep the alcohol blending solution out and certainly don't put it next to the glossy accents bottle as they are exactly the same sized and shaped bottles.

Even so I was pleased with my "To Turn 60 is Time to Celebrate" Card and hope my friend will be too !

A special birthday card for my special husband. The background was created using Ranger alcohol inks - Red Pepper, Butterscotch and Caramel with a little gold over the top. I then stamped a collage of clocks over the top with black Archival ink - from Time and Space sheet by Non-Sequitur. The large clock was also from this set, while the small flying clock face was cut from the free stamp in February 2011's issue of Craft Stamper, as was the text. The Bookplate was cut from a Sizzix Bigz die - Bookplates. The wings were cut from a Sizzlit - Scribbles #1. It's not very clear but there is a bubble sticker over the clock face. The screw-like brads were coloured using Red Pepper and Gold Ranger alcohol inks.

The inside reads "Time to Celebrate". I picked this stamp up in a bargain bin during my recent visit to Australia.

Instead of the usual mechanism of round sticky pads, I made a column of washers and a small round magnet the same size, which was strong enough to stick to the 2 pennies as well.

Time has not exactly been on my side recently, though I have been busy in my craft room this last week. Hopefully I'll get around to publishing some other work in the next few days.