Red White & Blue

Red White & Blue: Papaw's River

This is my card for the "Red White & Blue" LTC swap.  My parents have a river camp on the Ohio River and we spend a lot of time there in the summer.  On the 4th of July we always go out and watch the fireworks from the boat.

All of my kids have called the Ohio River- "Papaw's" River.  I have even heard my cousins kids talk about "Uncle Bill's" River.

I carved this stamp a few years ago when I hid stamps at the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival.  It is noting fancy but I really enjoyed making this card :)

Gnome Day 2014

I have been so busy that I forgot to blog about Gnome Day.  It was Saturday and we were out of town most of the day so we planted our box on Thursday.  But someone planted a box for us!

On Sunday we found Gnome Day 2014: Friendship.  And it had a gnome hitchhiker.  It is so exciting to a find a new box in our own backyard.

In the pic-Daddy's Favorite Princess is playing with gloves from the bag, Lego Clone Trooper is stamping, and R2-D2 is playing with the compass.  Lil Ewok had fallen asleep so he and noxer hubby stayed in the van.

Exploring & Planting at Eagle Slough

Eagle Sloug

This is the second year that we have participated in the GAQLBE.  The people we were paired with said that they had children who liked Star Wars.  And I have children who like Star Wars so we decided to swap Star Wars stamps.  We sent them an AT AT Walker and they sent us a BIG Yoda.

I grew up in 80's and I am used to the old Star Wars and Yoda living in a swamp.  We already have several boxes in the local wetlands so we needed to look for another spot for our new stamp.  This afternoon the kids and I headed out to Eagle Slough.  We had never been here before and it was fancier than I thought it would be with lots of resting benches, trail markers, tree ID signs, etc.

I "Googled" slough and it says that it is a swap.  I thought it had to do with the movement of the river.  The Ohio River used to come higher into Indiana and we have several sloughs in this area.  Howell Wetlands and Hovey Lake are both sloughs.

Wetland area

Anyway, we enjoyed walking the trails at the slough but finding a good hiding spot for our box was tricky.  Like I said before the box was pretty big.  The stamp itself is almost 4x5.  So we had to find a hiding spot that was big enough for the box and would not float away in the annual floods in the area.

I think our spot is okay but we put a rock on it to help it stay put.  I will defiantly come back and check it later in the year.  This may need to be a late spring/summer/fall only box.  We will see.

Here is the website about the Eagle Slough if you would like more info :)
http://www.eagleslough.org/

Flowering Trees LTC

Can't wait for Spring: Flowering Trees 

I am in the LTC swap "Can't Wait for Spring."  I wasn't going to join this one because I had already made some spring cards and a summer card and I was ready to start thinking about a fall card.  But I felt like another boxer twisted my arm.

For a while I have been thinking about carving a stamp of a bare tree and using it for different seasons.  I had already carved it and was working on a different project when I decided I would use it for this swap.

So I stamped my tree on plain white card stock and I carved up a tiny birdhouse.  For the flowers and leaves I used pencil erasers.  Then I  mounted the whole thing to some green paper.

I like how this one and the summer one turned out.  I will work on the winter one next.  I am in a swap where you have to reuse a stamp you already have.  I was going to do something completely different but I can't find the stamp I had in mind so I think I will do the winter version of this tree for that.  You'll have to wait a little bit to see that one :)