My Son's Initials and some Challenges

Dear Scrappers,

Greetings from Galveston.
This week, I am designing and writing from the gulf coast ;-)
My kids are at the NASA camp having a blast and leaving me some time to take care of many errands. And giving me the opportunity to attend  CKC Houston, thus I wanted to finish this project and share it with you quickly.
I bought these cardboard letters for my son's room. I used as inspiration three different challenges from my favorite blogs that I have been following:

CC3 Challenge 7: Painted Industrial

Challenge-12: whos-boss from Craft Hoarders Anonymous
which is all about embossing...

and finally from Simon Monday Challenges:
J as Inspiration: Jump Rings

I love all three blogs and use them as inspiration as much as I can. I get motivated to create by them and love their designers.
As many of you know, I have tried to keep up Tim's newest book: Compendium of Curiosities 3 and many of the techniques used here, I learned from there.
Inspiration Emporium is sponsoring this CC3 challenge #7, please visit Joy... and say Hi from me ;-)

Here is my finalized  project:

I used some papers from CTMH wotg: Later Sk8er and some of their elements.
I used Tim's Painted Industrial technique for my foil taped cardstock strips and die-cuts. Details for that technique to be found in page 46 of CC3...
I used the embossing Diamond Plate & Riveted Metal Set by Tim Holtz for the metal strips and die-cuts made with Sizzix Bigz BIGkick/Big Shot Die by Tim Holtz, Gadget Gears:

 I used a previously made for the center of the A, and for the letters to spell my son's names die-cuts (Inside out)  from light grey cardstock and some foil-taped pieces too.

 I used TH picked fence paint to distress the cardboard edges and some grey crayon from my daughters' stash (who is beginning to be a craft hoarder too ;-).

The outside of the letter were distressed with peacock feathers distressing ink to highlight them against the grey papers...
Here is a close-up of the different letter I used:

 I added a rocket to the A to highlight the Outer space collage paper from Karen Foster...

 I used some Jump rings (Ring Fasteners from Idea-ology TH) instead of regular brads using the Simon Monday Challenge as inspiration and a way to add later some Lego gears from my son's stash and to make this lock piece movable (this die, i bought ages ago and finally i got to use it ;-)
My son loves all kind of locks and gears. He inherited my father's engineer's mind ;-)

 I also used some Hitch fasteners and game spinners to complete the steam-punk look...
Some gears were distressed using oregano alcohol ink (i bought this ink set in my first convention back in 2007) and more peacock feathers distressing ink.

 I added some of the Later Sk8ter elements to the gears after distressing them too to complement the look:

I tried to distress the Idea-ology mirrored star and added it to the Later Sk8ter one:

 A closer look to each single letter:

I hope you enjoyed this fun project and give me some feedback.
Please follow my blog as well (I'm trying to get my numbers up ;-)
Have a blessed weekend and I hope to see you at CKC this Thursday or Friday,
Vicky