Postage Stamp LTC

I am in an LTC swap called, "Philately" (aka-postage stamps).  My first idea was to carve the Girl Scout stamp.  But after I examined it and worked on the transfer I decided that it was too hard.  This was my second idea-the Holy Family postage stamp.

For the background I took distressed stains and rubbed them on the paper.  Then I sprayed a gold Tattered Angels spray on it.

I carved the star stamp and the Mary/Joseph stamp. I embossed the star stamp and added the USA FOREVER on the side.

Philately: Holy Family (2013)

The grey boarder was tricky.  I had a hard time with the color.  Once I found a color that was close to the stamp the fancy scissors tore it up.  I eventually got it but the cards ending up being to big for sleeves :P

Spring Break 2014

Creation Museum

Hello to my 2 blog readers ;) I try to post once a week but time has gotten away from me and I lost my camera! I can't have a blog post without some kind of pictures. So I took a few pics with my tablet.  It's not the best but I am still looking for my camera.

This past week was Spring Break (woo hoo) and we spent a few days in the Cincinnati area. We drove over on Tuesday and spent a few hours at the Creation Museum.

Noah explaining how to build the ark

We were there about 2.5 years ago but we wanted to see if anything had changed. They have added zip lines and the kids wanted to try that out. But once we got there we discovered that only Lego Clone Trooper could do it. R2-D2 was old enough but not big enough.

The Creation Museum is running a special this year where kids are free and the tickets are two day passes. On the first day we just went thru the museum. On the second day we walked thru the museum again, saw the planetarium show, walked the grounds, and checked out the petting zoo. The Creation Museum is a pretty cool place. They are trying to build a life size ark.

http://creationmuseum.org/

Petting Zoo

Last time we were there we looked for two letterboxes and couldn't find any. This time we looked for one there and one down the road and found them both.

We left the museum about lunch time, had lunch at Subway, and went to the Newport Aquarium. It was good too but I am starting to think that once you have seen one aquarium you have kinda seen them all  Or if you go to a nice big zoo you don't really need to see an aquarium.  But the kids liked it and there was a letterbox close by.

http://www.newportaquarium.com/

L to R: Lil Ewok, Daddy's Favorite Princess,
Lego Clone Trooper & R1-D2

Then we went out to supper and back to the hotel. On Thursday morning we packed up and went to the Entrainment Junction. It is "the worlds largest indoor, interactive train display" and it was awesome. All of my boys love trains and they had a great time looking at all the displays.

Entertrainment Junction is 25,000 square feet, with more than 2 miles of tracks taking you thru 3 different time periods. It was neat to see all the tunnels, bridges, building, people, etc.

They also have a fun house with a few mazes. There is a mirror maze, one with curtains, and more.  I highly recommend Entrainment Junction if you are in the area.

http://www.entertrainmentjunction.com/

Entrainment Junction 

Turn table from above 

Princess in the fun house

Robins!

Someone recently posted on AQ that they were looking for people to carve stamps that went with sculptures in a park in Michigan.  They wanted you to carve a stamp based on the title of the sculpture and I picked "Robins!"  I really like my stamp and I will probably recarve it for a bird event that I am hosting this fall.

Here is a link to the sculpture if you want more info:
http://www.michlegacyartpark.org/art_park_news/robins-makes-its-nest-in-the-art-park/

Something New for Spring

I am participating in an LTC swap called "Something New for Spring." I did a Christmas one a few years ago and decided to try another one. My card is called, "Rainy Day."

For this card I messed around with alcohol inks again. The other times I sprayed or rubbed the ink directly on the paper, spritz with water, and sprinkled salt on top.

This time I left out the salt and I bought a craft mat to rub my inks on. I stamped and dropped the ink on the mat, sprayed with water, rubbed the paper into the ink, and I set them aside to dry.

Anther thing "new" about these cards is that I have been wanting to use pages from a book. When you look at ATCs a lot of them use pages from books and I think it looks cool. So I gave it a try this time. I went and dug around in some books from high school and started tearing out pages.

I thought the blues looked like a gloomy rainy day. I tore the paper to the size I wanted and made the text vertical so it looked like rain coming down. To brighten it up a bit I took an embossing pen, drew some streaks of rain coming down, and embossed them with glitter.

Finally, the stamp I carved was smaller than I normally carve. When I was done with the card I sent the stamp off to someone who was requesting animals with umbrella stamps for an event.

Something New for Spring: Rainy Day

I found this technique on the blog gomakesomething.com.

Wonderful Weekend

Our 400th box!

This weekend Daddy's Favorite Princess and I went to the Tools, Techniques, and Treats 2014 Event in Greenville, Ohio. We met a lot of people and had a great time.  We had two milestone moments while we were there. We found our 400th box (woo hoo!) and we could add another state to our list of places where we have letterboxed.

Outside box

On Friday we basically left home as soon as the boys got out of school and we headed north. We had originally planned on staying in Richmond, In but decided to stay in Indy instead (long story). Saturday morning we drove to the event and the boys dropped us off. They all went and did other stuff.

At the event the princess and I took some classes. We learned how to make logbooks and felt pouches. Then we looked for letterboxes and had lunch. After lunch we tackled event boxes and exchanges. The princess got tired of stamping after lunch so she took a painting class and played with some other kids.

People stamping

It was so cool to meet some Indiana folks. I find their boxes, see them post on the boards, get their LTCs/postals, and I got to meet some of them! Who knew you had to go to Ohio to meet Hoosiers?

After the event we went back and stayed another night in Indy. Since it was supposed to be a "big" letterboxing weekend my noxer hubby said that we could box in Indy some (I am always talking about how much I would love to box in Indy). I brought some clues for Crown Hill cemetery just in case.

The princess painting

We got to the cemetery at 9:30 and it was 27 degrees, yikes. The kids stayed in the warm car for the first few boxes. We boxed for about 3 hours before the kids got tired, hungry, and fussy. Thankfully we found a restroom at the cemetery or we would have left sooner ;) We looked for 19 boxes and found 17 and a hitchhiker.  We stumbled on some other letterboxers too.

We also stopped and got a box on the way home. I now have a total of 431. I would like to say that I want to hit 500 by the end of the year. But unless we go to more events I don't see that happening.

Fam walking thru the cemetery 

Hitchhiker Hustle Again

Hitchhiker Hustle 3: Wise Little Owl

I participated in a Hitchhiker Hustle tracker last year and really enjoyed it.  You make a HH, make a LTC with the stamp, send them both off to the host, and you get a new HH and one of all the cards.

This year I carved up an owl for my HH.  For the card I played around with another new technique.  I took pages from a book, squirted paint on the top, and take a credit card to drag the paint down.  I found the technique at gomakesomething.com and I thought it would work well for a tree trunk.

For the leaves, I went out on Black Friday ready to buy a leaf punch.  I had my Jo Ann's coupon in hand, I left 2 of my kids in the car, and ran in.  To my surprise the check out line went all the way back to the cutting table!  I knew I couldn't leave my kids in the car that long.  So I went to see if they actually had what I wanted so I could come back later and get it.  Sadly it appeared that they didn't have any leaf punches.

Later that day, I went to my parents house to pick up my other 2 kids and I told my mom about the crowd at Jo Ann's.  She takes me up to her scrapbook room and she had 3 leaf punches that were exactly what I wanted.  So I got to borrow them for free :)

PS-I found one of the HHs from the swap last year when I was boxing in St Louis in November.