Christmas Ornaments 2019

2019 Ornaments

This is my 4th year to participate in the Christmas Ornament swap, hosted by Moose on the Loose.  I got a bunch of fun ornaments today.

For this swap you are supposed to make an ornament and include a stamp.  The stamp can be on the ornament or a tag or something like that.

Last year someone made personalized ornaments for each participant.  I decided to do that too.  I got this idea from Pinterest.  I had an old atlas that was worn and had been wet.  I found each persons city on the map and made sure that it was inside the ring of the ornament.

Home is where the heart is 

If you follow my blog, the stamp should look familiar.  This is the stamp that I used all year in the New/Underused Product LTC swaps.  Here I made Shrinky Dinks with them.  I'm very happy with how they turned out :)

Merry Christmas <3

Scrap LTC

 This is my card for Gypsy Fiddler's "Scraps Challenge-The Sequel" LTC tracker.  When She hosted the first one, it filled up before I could join.  I thought about making cards anyway in the hopes someone would drop, but didn't. 

My original idea for a scrap card was a crazy quilt.  But when she posted the second swap she suggested that we make something for the upcoming holiday season.  That is when I decided to make the cornucopia. 

For the swap, we had to make at least 3 stamps from our scrap pile.  I carved 14 but only used 13.  I didn't end up using the curved leaf.

Carving the stamps was the easy part of this tracker.  Making time to color, cut, and assemble was the hard part.  This was my first time using Copic
markers and I really enjoyed it.  I tried shading three different ways- going over the area with the same color, going over the area with a darker color, and going over the shaded area with grey.  The princess was excited to play with them and shaded some of the pieces. 

Another new thing I used on this swap was a sticker machine.  My mom is a scrapbooker and she uses these to assemble layered embellishments that she makes with her Cricut.  My daughter saw them, asked for one for her birthday, and I borrowed it for this project. 

I think it was easier that gluing them all individually but it leaves a residue like rubber cement.  I had to rub down all the cards at the end to get it off. 

I'm happy with how the cards turned out but I will probably not be doing anything like this again.  I am turning these stamps into an event box.  You may see them in the future :)

New/Underused Product Part 4

Linden Leaf is hosting some different LTC swaps this year.  She posted them last year giving us plenty of time to learn, play, and work on our cards.  For the swap you are supposed to pick a new or underused product and use it in different ways to make four sets of cards.  I picked the Gelli Plate.  I have used my plate a few times but I thought I was not using it to its fullest.

This is my final one of these swaps.  This is the one technique that I have been dying to try since these swaps started.  I had no idea that you could use alcohol inks on a gelli plate.  HERE is the video that I tried to copy.

Start off by putting the alcohol ink on the plate, spread it around with the brayer, and let it dry.  Then, in the video, she puts a stencil down and pushed it down with a piece of bubble wrap.  I love the stencil she uses and wish she gave more info about it.  (Sorry that my stencil is clear.)

Next she adds ink with a kitchen trivet.  I have a silicon oven mitt with a similar texture and used that.  She put the ink on a "puddle pad" and stamps the trivet in that.  I have no idea what a "puddle pad" is and I put the ink directly on my oven mitt.

The woman in the video is a little annoying and adds more texture items and another color with the brayer.

After this last layer of ink she stamps the whole thing  (stencil still down) with a large texture plate.  I don't have one of those but saw this serving tray at the dollar store and thought it would do that same thing.  I didn't really see the pattern from the serving tray on the plate but some of the ink does come off so I assume it works. 

Now it's time to pull off your stencil.  When the ink is dry, roll out a thin later of paint.  In the video she adds more texture after the paint and I did the same with a wrinkled up grocery bag.  Finally, you pull your print.  For this set, I used only white card stock.

For the first go I followed the video religiously.  But after a few pulls I kinda did whatever.  After a while I stopped with the oven mitt and used a corner of the bubble wrap instead.  I changed up the colors a little bit each time, sticking with a fall theme.

The hardest part about these cards was picking a border color and stamping my stamp.  I wanted to stamp my stamp in a maroon color on velum but it bled and looked like a red blob.  I tried two different inks pads one of them being Stazon.  I ended up stamping it with brown.

I'm very happy with how these cards turned out.  I am very likely to use this technique again :)  BIG THANKS to Linden Leaf for hosting these swaps <3

Here is my first card:
https://wchristmas6.blogspot.com/2019/02/newunderused-product-part-1.html

My second card:
https://wchristmas6.blogspot.com/2019/05/newunderused-product-part-2.html

And my third card for the new/underused product LTC swap:
https://wchristmas6.blogspot.com/2019/08/newunderused-product-part-3.html

Four Seasons Day Event

Yesterday, my son Boxing Turtle and I attend the Four Seasons Day Event in Chandler, In.  Chandler is about 30 minutes from our house and the event started at 10 am.  I thought I was going to get to sleep in but the kids were up bright and early.

For this event, they divided up their little town into four sections and each section was a season.  We started off in Spring and got the Summer boxes too.

Then we went back for lunch and stamped a few table top boxes.  After lunch we found Fall and Winter.  We missed one of the Spring boxes but talked to some folks at lunch who said it is now in the right spot.  We found all 36 of the event boxes.

When we were done we went back for a snack and stamped more table tops.  I had wanted to exchange with a few folks but they were all out boxing when I was ready to stamp.

The weather was nice and we had a good time.  Boxing Turtle is a funny navigator, reading too much of the clue at a time, which had us driving in circles because I couldn't remember what he said.  We took a selfie in each season but forgot to take any pics in the church.

Shakamak & Event Stamps

Shakamak State Park 

About 2 weeks ago, my boxing buddy and I went back to Shakamak State Park.  We attended an event there in May but only found half the boxes.

I dropped the kids off at school, got gas, picked up G-MA, and we headed north to the park.  Shakamak is about 2 hours away.  We had talked about going back a few times but had to wait for good weather.  We ended up finding 33 of the 37 boxes we looked for.  I left a hitchhiker and G-MA gave me a few that she had.

Western Event Stamp

Teacup and mudflinginfools are hosting a western event and asked for stamps.  I carved these three and I'll be sending an older stamp.  They asked that we wait until after October 1st to send them.  I need to get them packaged up and in the mail before they get burred and I totally forget :)

Autumn Craft & Swap

This is my card for aMAZEing adventure frogs "Autumn Craft & Swap" tracker.  This is my 9th time to participate in one of these swaps and I am signed up for the winter one too.

I kinda cheated and used the exact same stamps from the card I made last year. HERE is a link to that blog post if you want to check it out.  My cards this year are called, "Autumn Leaf."

I found this technique on Pinterest and you can learn more here.  It is the second technique on the page.  I forgot to take a pic of the first step but I'll walk you thru what to do.
Take a cardboard box and put paper towels in the bottom.  Lay your watercolor paper in the box and the stencil on top.  Spray Ranger Distress Resist Spray on the stencil/paper.  You should wash the stencil right away and let the paper dry.

Then spray the paper with Distress Sprays.  I have a lot of the Distress Oxide Sprays and I used Fired Brick and Spiced Marmalade.  I think it would have looked better with plain Distress Sprays but I didn't want to waist and used the Oxide ones.  Once they were all dry I cut them to size.

Autumn Craft & Swap 2019: Autumn Leaf

For the leaves, I rubbed Distress Ink and Oxide pads on my craft mat.  I sprayed the ink with water and smeared the card stock paper thru the ink.  I tapped the paper around until I was happy with the colors.  I let it dry, stamped my stamp, and cut out the leaves.

I glued the leaf to the Distress Resist background.  And I glued that to white paper like in the blog post I was following.  It felt weird to have a white boarder but I like it.  I thought the cards needed something so I added my "Hello Fall" stamp.  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Try Something New LTCs

This is my card for brailleboxer's "Try something new" LTC swap.  My card is simply titled "wander."

My original idea was to paint a floral background with acrylic paint.  The only time I use acrylic paint is when using my gelli plate I thought it would be fun to paint a background.  But I wanted to add some texture and this card ending up being a mixture of cards I have made before.

Only one time before I used playing cards for my base and I did it again this time.  I glued down old text papers with Matt Gel medium.  Then I covered it with Gesso, laid down a stencil, and put the Gesso on in one area. 

Now I was ready to paint my abstract floral background.  But I got to thinking, if I paint with acrylic paint, it will cover the text papers.  I started experimenting with other things-watercolor paints, distress inks with a water brush, and distress crayons.

I really liked the bright colors of the distress crayons.  In the past, I had used the crayons more like watercolors.  But this time I colored with the crayons and smeared the color around a bit with a cotton ball. 

Try something new: wander.

I carved two stamps for this card, stamped them on vellum, and attached them with a small glue dot.  I am very happy with how my cards turned out. 

Just for fun, I left the Gesso off a few cards.  I like the look of them too.