Old Timers and how to get the most out of your charms!

Have you seen the new gadget gear cog charms (see them here)? They are just awesome and the perfect layout embellishment for boys, teens, men and all things needing a bit of an industrial feel.

They go perfectly with the Kaisercraft Garage Days collection. 

I have already shared how to emboss with a charm using a Cuttlebug or Bigshot (click here to see the full post), but you can emboss them without a Cuttlebug too. The best thing about this method is that you get to use them again on a different project! Read on for more details.

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First, let's do some random stamping in the upper half of a Nuts & Bolts paper using any background stamp. You can find lots of great background textures in the stamps section here. 

In my latest clean-up, I came across some old letter die-cuts that went into the "use it or lose it" pile. They matched my project perfectly, but they are sooooo old, please don't ask me where to get them.

You can punch, die-cut, hand-cut or nibble out several 1" circles and rub on or stamp some letters on some of them to make a title. Ink around the plain ones and rub Inka Gold (Champagne) around the letter circles. 

Now arrange them on the top 7" of your background paper. I kept them quite random, but in vertical lines, so I can stitch over them later. 

Tear and layer the front, back and barcode strip of the Tyre Shop paper: 

Sew across the circles (skip the letter circles) and around the edge of the layered bottom papers. You can be really rough and messy. 

Put one of the cog charms under the background paper and rub over it with a stylus or anything fairly blunt (you don't want to tear through the paper). 

The outlines of the cog will be visible, but not very clearly, so we'll highlight them by rubbing some ink over them. Again, embrace the messiness! 

 There you go, lots of little cogs and you still get to use the original one elsewhere! 

 This is now a pretty cool background and only needs a photo and a few more embellies. I cut some tags from the Spare Parts paper and teamed them with a felt star, a cap charm, a LOL charm, some more cogs and a ball & chain. 

 So go and get some of the new cogs and gears and have some messy fun!

Geli