Him LTC

This is my card for Team Awesome Pants' "Him" LTC swap.  My cards is called "Track 12."  For this swap TAP made a Praise and Worship CD.  Participants were supposed to pick a number and she would send the song title that went with that track on the CD.  We were asked to keep our song titles top secret and I found it very hard to not share my card on Facebook.

I got Track 12: Our Great God.  I had never heard this song before.  About a year and a half ago we switched to a baptist church that only sings hymns and I don't listen to Christian radio.  It's a great song, but the first time I listened to it nothing jumped out at me for the LTC.  I thought about making a plain worship card with silhouettes of people with their hands raised on a gelli print background.  

But when I listened the second time the end of the last verse got my attention.  It says, "Let all the moons and all the stars, In all the universe, Sing praises to the living God, Who rules them by His Word." 

Him: Track 12

I jumped on Pinterest and started looking for space ATCs.  I found two videos of this background.  In the first video the woman is hard to understand and she doesn't tell what colors she is using.  I like her card better because it has more blue.  But I followed the second video because she gives more detailed instructions.  

I played around with different papers for this technique.  The woman in the video says she uses watercolor paper.  I tired card stock, Bristol, and watercolor.  Card stock worked best for me.  I rubbed the ink on, dripped water, blotted, let it dry, and splatted white paint with a tooth brush.  Then I glued my space background to the grey background, stamped my text stamp, and attached my moon with a 3D glue dot.  I LOVE how these cards turned out :) 

Christmas LTC's 2016

I believe this is my 4th year to participate in Beetle's Christmas LTC swap and my card is called, "The Reason for the Season."

 I found my image and carved it right away but I was torn on the background.  I really wanted to glue some burlap fabric to the card. But in the tracker Beetle asks that you don't make your cards too heavy because it is a large swap (30 people).

I was on online looking at craft supplies and saw the Tim Holtz burlap stencil.  I bought it but still had problems deciding how to use it.  I sprayed ink on it, rubbed ink on with a Distress Ink Applicator, and brushed acrylic paint on it.  I didn't like how any of those turned out.

Christmas LTCs 2016: The Reason for the Season

I got to thinking about my card from two years ago.  Here is the link to that Blog post with step by step instructions and photos.  Because this is such a large swap I was only going to make 30 cards.  But I got down to the end and ran out of paper.  I thought about using different paper on that last one but my OCD kicked in and I went to Hobby Lobby and bought more paper.  Now I have 5 extra cards.

In the tracker Beetle asks that you share a Christmas memory with your card.  One of my favorite Christmas memories is performing in the live nativity as a Girl Scout at our zoo.  The zoo provided children's costumes, played the story on a tape, and we would go out into the petting zoo area with sheep, goats, llama, etc.  It was a lot of fun and afterward we would get hot chocolate and cookies.  Our zoo is run by the city so they would never allow that type of thing now but it was fun the few times we did it

This picture was taken in 1987 and I am the magi with the blue hat holding the candle next to the angel.  My mom has a boatload of pictures in her basement and thankfully I only had to go thru 2 photo albums to find this pic.

Fast Food LTCs

Daddy's Favorite Princess and I are participating in Mommy's HERBs "National Fast Food Day 2016" LTC swap.

This was the princesses idea and of course she picked McDonald's.  She carved the golden arches and I carved her text.  We looked for a way to make her card more interesting and found the burger & fry washi tape on Etsy.

I picked Jimmy John's for my card.  My husband and I ate lunch there shortly after I joined this swap and I asked for an extra sandwich paper for the background of my cards.

I think our cards look great and we will look for a place to hide them on November 16th, National Fast Food Day.