Cog Wheels

Hard to believe that we are already half way through June already and in a couple of days it will be the Summer Solstice!

Lots of frantic activity in the garden with birds queuing up to get to the feeder, so much so that in between the squabbles, fisty-cuffs kept breaking out.  It got so bad I went out and bought a second feeder to try and keep the peace!  I honestly don't know how they can get off the ground at the rate they are going through suet balls, meal worms and seed mixes!

I was struggling a bit trying to work out what to make for this week's Freshly Made Sketches Challenge.  There were a few false starts as nothing seemed to work the way I wanted it to.

Over the weekend I was working on some new boxes for my son's supply of cards.  He had handed me one of the originals I'd made for him which was looking the worse for wear and asked me if I could make him another.  I ended up repairing that one, which was a favourite of his, and a couple of others.  While I had embossed some of the cardstock for the boxes with a effect cog wheel embossing folder and had cut out some cogs for decoration from the Tim Holtz set I had.  It was when I saw the cut out corner pieces that I realised I might have what I needed for this week's sketch.

Be You!

Nice to see the days getting longer & soon the clocks will be springing forward but today it is a bit on the chilly side.  It has been trying to snow and apparently it is going to be rather a cold week, it looks as though my heated throw will be staying out storage for a bit longer!

I was having a look for something among my crafty bits and bobs during the week and came across a sheet of Bird Crazy stamps I had coloured in a long while ago.  A couple of days later one of hubby's nephews had posted this Gif on his Facebook page

 so I just had to do something with the stamps which may be appropriate

I hadn't used these stamps for ages and when I saw the latest Freshly Made Sketches Challenge sketch

I originally thought that I would use one of the other stamps I had found as there were some ready coloured and cut out.  I came up with this in combination with a Tim Holt's Mixed Media #3 die but wasn't very happy with it so it was back to the drawing board (or rather the craft stash).

After a lot of staring at things I decided I hadn't really done many male oriented cards lately so set myself the goal at finding something to fit.  I had a checkered plate embossing plate (Crafters Companion "Gun Metal") and used that as my starting point and then the industrial theme began to take shape so the Tim Holtz "Gearhead" cog wheel dies came out. 

Originally it was just going to be an arrangement of the cog wheels but when it came to looking out a sentiment for it I found the Dyan Reavely "Be you, the world will adjust" stamp and remembered I also had a Tim Holtz world globe die.  My thinking behind this card was to set the globe slightly at an angle to the cogs as if it was part of a mechanism.  Oh well, it was just a thought, but this is what the reality of that looks like: