And so it begins....

Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed your New Year celebrations and are all set for the crafting year ahead? Ideally I would have liked to ease myself into the year slowly, but already the Birthday's are coming thick and fast. Today is my "best mates" Birthday, so I really couldn't let that one slip past could I?

So here is the card I made for him. It's all pretty much been made using items from the new Chronology range of products from the current Do Crafts promotion. The Chronology products are ideal for all of your male themed Birthday's and if you're a fan of SteamPunk, then they'll be right up your strasse too.

To start with, I cut a piece of paper taken from the 12" x 12" Chronology paper pack into two equal pieces and matt a layered them onto some Mirror Card

securing them using the Chronology Brads.

Which, if you look closely you'll see that they have a screw type head which ties in with the whole project.

To keep the metal theme going, I embossed a piece of Mirror card using the Grand M-Bossibilitie, Dainty Dots (EG002)

and mounted the pieces of paper onto it. As much as I love using the Spellbinders Sprightly Sprocket Dies on my SteamPunk projects, sometime they can be just that bit too big!

Well, these little cogs and wheels from XCut, should solve that problem and they'll also co ordinate with the larger Spellbinders Sprightly Sprockets ones! Result!

So, I teamed the cogs up with a selection of embellishments from the Chronology range,

laying them out onto my card first just to see what would look best and then stuck them down.

Some raised

and some flat.

Finishing off with a pewter gem in the middle to hide some of the double sided foam.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with my first card of 2013! Thanks for checking us out. See you soon. Andy.