Kids Only-Boys

I am hosting some kids only LTC swaps.  My daughter doesn't like getting "boy cards" so I set up a girl swap and a boy one.  It is supposed to start in about a week.

The stamp and card at the top was made by R2-D2-age 8.5.  It is a Minecraft creeper.  He sat down to carve his stamp and after a while he brought it to me saying that he messed up.  It was a mess so we flipped it over and started again.  This time we talked about what he wanted it to look like so he knew what to carve away.  I mounted his stamp to foam because he carved a lot away on the back side.

The stamp and card at the bottom was made by Lego Clone Trooper-age 11.  It is the Tree of Gondor.  The tree is supposed to have stars around the top but he wanted to ink it up after carving the tree and test it out.  The ink covered the starts and he forgot about them until he was done caring the stamp.

The tree is embossed on the card.  Lego Clone Trooper likes to emboss and I help him with that part.  I will stamp the cards and he will emboss or vise versa.

Kids Only-Girls

Very Hungry Caterpillar by Daddy's Favorite Princess (5) 

I am hosting some kids only LTC swaps.  My daughter doesn't like getting "boy cards" so I set up a girl swap and a boy one.  It is supposed to start in about a week.

Back in November I participated in a swap about favorite childhood books.  According to my countdown widget the swap started 72 days ago and I still have not received my cards.

When I was making my cards the princess insisted on making cards too.  I told her it was for adults remembering their favorite books from when they were a kid but she didn't care, she wanted to make one too.  I finally gave in, helped her pick the image, transfer, and she carved away.  After the stamp was done she didn't bug me about the cards so I didn't bring it up either.

I set up this swap and told her that she needed to make the cards with her caterpillar stamp and she was very gung ho.  She wanted to do it all by herself.  So I let her; the bottom card in the pic is her original.  But she left them down where the baby could get them and he tore them up :(

A little while later I talked her into letting me help her.  I wanted to stamp the cards using the stamp press so the colors would look nicer.  She agreed and I worked on the front and she did her sig stamp on the back.  After a few cards I suggested that we punch holes in the cards like the holes in the pages of the book.  Well, she thought that was the best thing since sliced bread and she stopped stamping so that she could focus all her attention on the holes.

I think they turned out pretty good.  We will probably plant this stamp at a local library.

First Time Hosting

I just hosted my first LTC swap. It was called "Christmas Carols 2013." Everything went smoothly and all the cards look great. Some folks are just so creative! But with a snow storm I am not sure when I'll get the cards to the post office :/

O Little Town of Bethlehem LTC

I am hosting my first LTC swap!  Back in October I noticed that there was only one Christmas LTC tracker on AQ.  Last year I participated in about a half dozen Christmas swaps and I was looking forward to making some more Christmas cards this year.

I asked on the AQ boards if anyone would be interested in another Christmas swap and several people said yes.  I called it, "Christmas Carols 2013" and I had a dozen people sign up.  This is so exciting :)

Last year, I participated in a swap called,  "Something New For Christmas."  I got back some really awesome cards.  There were several techniques that I just had to try and this is one of them.  I actually picked out this stamp image when the swap was over last time.  I have been looking forward to making this card for almost a year.

First, I took blue cardstock and painted it with white jeso.  While the jeso was still wet, I sprinkled the micro beads on it and pressed them down with some plastic wrap.  While that was drying, I carved my stamp and stamped it on the same blue cardstock that I used for the main background.  When the jeso was finished drying, I painted blue horizontal stripes across the card with three different shades of blue acrylic paint.  Now comes the hard part, I painted gold swirls on my blue background.  This has been my most labor intensive card that I have ever made but it was worth it!  I just love how they came out.    

Christmas Carols 2013: O Little Town of Bethlehem

Here are the instructions that I followed to make my cards:
http://techniqueszone.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/textured-micro-beads-backgrounds/