Thanksgiving LTC

Thanksgiving: Thank Full

This is my card for the "Thanksgiving" LTC tracker.  I love the simple Life is Good images so I looked for a Thanksgiving theme one.  I liked this one but thought that I would have to make it really big to get the detail and text to look nice.  Then I decided to make the stamp into a shrinky dink.  I probably should have made it bigger but I was worried about using too much carving material.

Shrinky Dinks

The start of this card is a lot like my Gesso one.  I cut my paper to be tag shaped.  Then I tore some old music paper and glued it to the card using Gesso and a knife.  I put the stencil on and put more Gesso on and let it dry.  I hadn't played around with alcohol inks in a while so I wanted to try that again.  I put the ink on the craft mat, sprayed it with a little water, and rubbed my card thru it.

Background before and after the inks

They started off really colorful but I quickly learned that alcohol ink doesn't take well to Gesso.  The color quickly faded.  I still thought they were pretty so I rolled with it.  To jazz it up a bit I sprayed the card with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist gold spray.

Then came the leaf.  I looked around the craft store for a leaf punch but didn't see one big enough.  I thought about printing one off on card stock to make a template and cutting out my own.  But I ending up ordering some die cut leaves  from Etsy.  They came in 3 shapes and 5 colors.  I took a Distress Stain ink pad and a alcohol ink applicator and rubbed the ink onto the edge of the leaves.

Added ink to the leaves

I glued the whole think together with school glue which was probably a mistake.  Some of the color behind the shrinky dink bled and looked odd.  But it is too late now.  I think they turned out pretty good.

Christmas Card LTC

This is my card for the "Christmas Card LTC 2015" tracker.  This is my 3rd year to participate in this swap.  My card is called, "Kisses from heaven."

I got the idea for this background from the Tim Holtz website via Pinterest.  It looked easy, wintery, and I wanted to give it a try.  But I had some issues.  I wanted to use the same ink colors as the website but had problems finding one of the colors.  And I couldn't find a small brayer.

For this technique you stamp your distress ink pads on the craft, mist with water, roll the brayer thru the ink, and roll onto paper.  I like that it looked like a dreary winter day.  I ended up ordering the small brayer online because I couldn't find one locally and I didn't like the look from my large brayer.

On the website they splatter some silver paint on the tag.  I like the idea so I reused some Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist spray.  It is not as dark but worked.

I wanted to add some text and thought about buying a "Let it snow" stamp.  But I made this card in September and couldn't find one.  I searched the web for a quote about snow.  The one I used says, "Snowflakes are kisses from heaven."  I printed them off my printer, drew the black box around the edge, cut them out and glued them on with a glue stick.

My stamp for the card is a simple snowflake.  I probably should have carved a fancier snowflake.  I stamped & embossed them, cut them out and glued them on.  For some of the cards I rubbed a silver Sharpe around the edge.  I didn't do it to all the cards because I wasn't sure if I liked it.  I guess my cards are more winter than Christmas but I really wanted to play with this background.  I think they turned out ok.