Life is Good Again LTC

Life is Good Again: Bed & Breakfast

I am hosting a "Life is Good" LTC swap again.  I really like the simple, positive, encouraging messages from the LIG shirts and whatnot.

I like camping and I recently bought a new book of camping scrapbook paper.  I looked around the LIG camping images and picked this one.  I messed up the words on the first go so I just cut them off and carved it again.  I really like the scrapbook paper but didn't want to hide it so I stamped my stamp on vellum and attached it to the paper with a mini glue dot.

I am hosting an event in September and I thought it would be cool to have a trail of these stamps at the event.  I have asked the LTC participants to donate their stamps and I have a few coming in.  If you have a LIG stamp that you are not using, I'd be happy to take it off your hands :)

For my Indiana themed event, I think I am going to call this series of stamps "Life is Good in Indiana."  

Heart Art LTC

This is my card for Beetle's "Heart Art" LTC swap.  My card is called "Mechanical Heart" and I stole this card idea entirely from LROSEM's blog post called Comet Months.  I will go ahead and walk you thru it.

LROSEM said she starts with Watercolor paper.  I am out so I used Bristol; it is thick like Watercolor but smooth.  Take an old gift card and smear glue around and add pieces of paper.  Now, I have never used a plastic card like this and I kept spreading it to thin.  It dried super fast and you can see on the edges of some of my cards that the text pages are not attached everywhere.

You smear the glue under and over the text pages.  When the glue is dry you apply Gesso with the plastic card too.  Again, I think I should have used more Gesso simply because the next few steps didn't turn out as well as I hoped.

For the next part, I took an old sock and a Spun Sugar Distressed Ink pad.  I started off tapping the sock on the pad and rubbing the sock on the paper.  But after a while, I stamped the ink pad directly on the paper and used the sock to rub the ink around.  I was hoping that the ink would be a little darker.  Maybe I should have tried a different color.

Heart Art: Mechanical Heart

Then, you cut the cards to size and stamp your stamp.  That part was easy ;)  Now for the fun part.  You paint Tim Holtz Distress Crackle Paint (I used clear) on the cards.   My cards didn't crackle as much as I would liked.  I think the problem there was that I didn't use enough Gesso.  The Crackle paint comes in 3 colors-black, while & clear.  I played around with the other colors a little bit on my scraps.  I will have to use them on a future project!

Then I edged the cards just like LROSEM.  I wasn't really happy with the cards but sent them off anyway.  I went away on vacation for 2 weeks and looking at my extra cards again I think they are not to bad.  The background looks pinker in person.

Vacation 2016

Arches NP

I just got back from a two week vacation out west, did you miss me?  Over a year ago my parents suggested that we all go on vacation together.  That would be my parents, me, my husband & 4 kids, my sister, her husband & 2 kids, and my other sister and husband.  It ending up being my parents, my family, and my 2 nieces.

We had a great two weeks out west.  We live in Indiana and went out thru the Rocky Mountains to southeast Utah.  We visited Arches & Canyonlands.  Then we packed up and went to southwest Utah.

Canyonlands NP

It just so happened that where we stopped for the night was having a hot air balloon festival.  And the people that my parents were camping next to said that we could go up in their balloon.  My dad and the 4 biggest kids took off to do that but the winds wouldn't cooperate and they didn't get to go up.  The kids still loved being so close to the balloons.

Balloon Festival

While in southwest Utah we went thru Bryce Canyon and Zion Canyon National Parks.  They are very different and very beautiful.  We hiked a trail at Bryce and just road the shuttle at Zion.

My parents at Bryce Canyon NP

Then we went down thru Nevada.  We had planned on touring the Hoover Dam but had issues.  It's probably to long of a story to go into here.  So we had a picnic lunch there at the lake made by the dam.

Zion Canyon NP

After Nevada we moved on to California where we had more problems.  We got almost to the campground we planed on staying at and we were turned around because of forest fires.  It took a while but we eventually found a place to camp.  We went thru the southern area of the Sequoia National Forest where we walked the Trail of 100 Giants.  We decided that we came this far that we would continue to the northern area.  There we were able to drive thru the famous tunnel log.

Trail of 100 Giants

The next day, we spent a little over an hour at ghost town and then started heading back east to the Grand Canyon.  We walked the rim trail at the south rim, enjoyed some shopping, and ice cream.  The last activity on the way home was the petrified forest.  My kids were expecting the trees to be standing.  They all enjoyed the colorful logs.

We made two stops on Route 66.  One was the Midpoint Cafe where we had lunch.  The other was the Cadillac Ranch.  We didn't take spray paint for the Cadillac Ranch but there were cans all over the ground and my kids joined in the fun.

Grand Canyon

When my parents came up with this idea I said that I had to find a letterbox in each state and I was surprised that my husband went along with it.  I already had boxes in Ind, Ill, and Mo.  I was able to get boxes in KS, CO, UT, NV, CA, AZ, NM, TX, OK & AR.  I found 13 boxes and 2 hitchhikers.  Of all the boxes I looked for only 1 was missing.

Petrified Forest NP 

This was my husband and kids first trip out west.  We camped every night but one.  It was exhausting but beautiful!  Two weeks living in a van is rough.

Cadillac Ranch 

Summer Craft & Swap

This is my card for the "Summer Craft & Swap" hosted by aMAZEing adventure frog.  My card is called, "Pooh :)"  This is the stamp that I send out last year for the BOTM.  It came back in one piece so I made cards and re-hid the stamp.

I got the idea for this card on Pinterest.  It is similar to my Gesso ones but this time you glue the papers down using Gel Medium.  I think I like it better than Gesso.  Also, I got on Etsy and ordered some new papers.  Some of them are from a German dictionary & encyclopedia.

After the Gel Medium was dry I sprayed the card with Dylusions London Blue, Vibrant Turquoise & water.  When that was dry I sprayed the cards with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist Dragonfly.  Then I let the cards sit for a day.

For the clouds, I used white acrylic paint with a Tim Holtz Bubble stencil.  It dried quickly and I added the Pooh quote, which I got on Etsy.  This part also comes from the Pinterest link above.  You stamp the stamp on tissue paper, tear it out, apply Gel Medium to the card, put the tissue paper down, and apply Gel Medium on top.  The instructions said that the tissue paper would disappear, and it didn't.  I am a little disappointed that you can see the tissue paper but I really like the finished card.

Then I attached the Pooh image with a glue stick.  I have used Mod Podge on card backgrounds before but never covered the whole card with it.  I decided that I wanted the cards to be shiny and I would cover the card.  But I learned pretty quick that the Dylusions sprays will run/smear when you paint the Mod Podge on :(  So I covered the Pooh first and then the rest of the card.  You have to keep it lite and fast.  I put two coats of Mod Podge and it smeared a little the second time too.

Really like how these cards turned out :)

Kids Event Stamps

Raggedy Ann by Daddy's Favorite Princess

I am hosting an letterboxing event on Saturday, September 24th at Lincoln State Park.  The name is 200 years in Indiana.

I am going to have two trails of stamps with an Indiana theme.  One is All About Indiana.  It will have the state flag, tree, flower, motto, etc.

The other is called Famous Hooisers.  It will be a trail of stamps for people who were born or lived in Indiana.  For this set I asked my kids to help out.

Little John by Lego Clone Trooper

Daddy's Favorite Princess (7) volunteered to carve Raggedy Ann (I helped clean up the face a little bit).  Johnny Gruelle was the creator of Raggedy Ann.  He was born in Ill but his family moved to Indy was he was two.

Lego Clone Trooper (13) carved Little John from Disney's Robin Hood.  Wonga Phillip Harris was born in Linton, Indiana.  He was a famous comedian, jazz musician, and singer.  Harris voiced the characters of Baloo from the Jungle Book, Thomas O'Malley of The Aristocats, and Little John from Robin Hood.

Someone signed up for my Famous Hooiser tracker and said that they would carve a stamp for Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield.  But then something happened and they backed out.  R2-D2 (11) was happy to carve it for me.  Davis was born in Marion, Indiana and grew up on a farm in Fairmount with 25 cats.

Garfield by R2-D2

Today I am working on the event stamp.  I have played around with a few ideas and finally picked one.  Next week my kids will be away at my sister-in-laws for their annual get away.  I plan on going to the state park and walking some of the trails I will be planting on.  I will be looking for good hiding spots :)

Hitchhiker Hustle Again

I really enjoy the GypsyLadybug's Hitchhiker Hustle swaps.  I commented to her a few months ago that she needed to host one again.  With these you make a HH and use the stamp to make LTCs.  You send both off and you get one of each LTC and a new HH :)

My card is called "Barn Quilt" and it is pretty simple.  I tore paper for the clouds & grass.  I had a tough time designing the barn.  It took me a few tries to get the angles on the roof just right.  I glued it all together with a glue stick.

The county just to the north of mine (Gibson) has a Barn Quilt Trail with 212 quilt squares.  Last year my boxing buddy and I were boxing at their visitor center and I got the map for the trail.  My boxing buddy joked that I should plant a box for every one!!   That is impossible but I am thinking about planting a few.  As of right now, I am not doing Box of the Month in 2017 and will plant one quilt square every month.  I was also thinking of challenging fellow boxers to plant some too.  This is totally on the back burner for now but I will let you know if I do it ;)

Back to the Hitchhiker Hustle...I made the logbook for my hitchhiker and sewed the pouch for the stamp.  Have I showed how to make these little books before?  I like using them for HH & Fleas.

You need a square piece of paper.  For this one I used 10 x 10.  You fold it in half and fold the outer parts to the middle.  You will have 4 long sections.

Then spin your paper around and do the same thing again.  Fold the paper in half and fold the outsides to the middle.

When you are done with this step you have 16 squares.  To make it easier to see I marked where to cut with a black marker.  Cut the outer folds to the last fold.  Then you spin it around and cut the middle fold to the last fold.  That's easy, right?

Then you fold it all up.  I found one of these at an event and I had to copy it.  I think it had a ribbon tying it all together.  Sometimes I do that too.

Anyway, I only had one pic for this blog entry and I thought I would spice it up a bit.

PS-Don't look at the mess on my desk.  I recently threw away a stamp in a pile of scraps.  Thankfully no one took out the trash right away  :D

LTC Shrinky Dinks

I am participating in aMAZEing adventure frog's "Inspired by Shrinky Dinks" LTC swap.  My original idea was to make a cool sky and grass on my Gelli Plate, carve up a butterfly/ladybug/dragonfly/etc, shrink it and attach it to the outdoor scene.  I even made the sky & grass and changed my mind.

In 2014 I was in a Christmas postcard swap and I loved it.  But I was busy in 2015, didn't do it and kicked myself for it.  So I thought I would carve up this 4x6 postage stamp and I could use it later as my Christmas postcard.

I worked on the stamp on and off for 3 months.  I got a mini #1 gauge from Kerbert to use mainly on this stamp.  I let my daughter borrow it and she bent it.  I sent it back and had it remade/sharpened so I could continue to work on the stamp.  

But I had issues baking the large Shrinky Dink.  I started off in the toaster oven and they were coming out misshapen and not flat.  I decided to move to the regular oven and that helped.

I really wanted to do them on the white shrink material but had a headache with that too.  It takes a while for the Stazon to dry on the all shiny white.  Then once it is dry if you rub your marker against the Stazon it bleeds and can rub away completely.  The original kind is like a coloring book; you can color on your stamp lines with almost no problems.  Shockingly, my noxer husband volunteered to help color them.   I attached the Shrinky Dink to white cardstock with tape runner.

Greeting from Indiana LTC

Every oven is different but I ended up baking mine at 325 degrees, on parchment paper with a piece of cardstock on top.  Sometimes they wanted to stick to the cardstock but they turned out pretty good.

Things to think about when making Shrinky Dinks.
1.  Size-Smaller is easier when baking.  Also, do you really want to color 20 4x6 cards exactly the same?
2.   Material-You can color more colors on the original than the white.  I recommend using the white for things like snowflakes, candy canes, photos, etc.  When you just want the color of the ink and white.