Time for a little road trip...

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "passport", bascially travel.  I

figured that everyone would be making pieces travelling to all corners of the globe so I thought I'd stick closer to home and take a little road trip!  When I was a kid and we emigrated from the USA back to the UK we came on the QE1, which sailed from New York.  We were living in Chicago at the time and the vintage road trip images on these stamps really take me back to our cross-country drive to board the ship.  I guess it must have taken us a few days because I remember being in a hotel room and watching an episode of Mission Impossible (remember that old black and white show?)  It was also Easter and I remember having an Easter egg hunt in the hotel room.

I started with a cheap wooden frame from that Swedish furniture store, you know the one I mean :)  I gave it 3 or 4 thin layers of white gesso and then sanded it to give a smooth surface for stamping.  The tire tracks were stamped with Coffee Archival ink and I used a blending tool to add some touches of Fired Brick and Chipped Sapphire in places.  I know it's easy for me to say but the photo really doesn't do it justice, it looks much better in real life!

I spritzed the background of the main piece with water and added Gathered Twigs distress stain and then dried it with my heat gun before adding the tyre tracks with Archival black.  I then added finger prints and splatters with more Gathered Twigs. I stamped the petrol pump and the snazzily-dressed pump jockey with Archival black and coloured it with Promarkers, distressing it with a Tonic scratchy thing (I forget the name of that tool right now, but it will be in my supplies list!).

I stamped the gas guage separately and cut it out and distressed it with more Gathered Twigs and splatters.  I fixed it to the corner of the piece and cut off the excess parts, adding them to other sides of the panel.  The Route 66 marker was stamped separately, coloured with Promarkers and distressed before fixing it in place.  Finally I gave the whole piece a light sanding to distress it further.

That's about it - this piece was certainly a trip down memory lane for me, even if it wasn't for you! :)

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

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