Famous Authors: Arthur Conan Doyle
This card was for the LTC tracker Famous Authors.  I ended chose Doyle because i was in the midst of doing a Sherlock Holmes tracker as well as having seen the tv series and movies recently.  He just stood out as someone who would be cool to do.  I originally did not carve his name on the stamp but thought it might be better if i had it on the card so proceeded to carve his moniker on a separate stamp.  It took me quite a few tries on some scraps to get that lettering right and i still had it just a 1/16 or so longer than the card stock so that also made it more difficult to line up correctly.  I stamped them both of a glossy card stock which really made the black pop.  You cannot press hard on glossy card stock or else the images will smear.  So you just have make sure you have enough inked applied and just give a firm but delicate impression when stamping.  The lines on his face and jacket could have been tighter and less jagged but i think the area around his moustache, lips and mouth came out very well.

Movies from A to Z: Quantum of Solace
This was a last second addition to my Movies from A to Z tracker.  someone had not turned their card in so i had to come up with a movie, design, and card within a few days so i could get them all out by the time the Academy Awards premiered.  This actually turned out better than i thought.  The lettering, which can be hit or miss sometimes, turned out a little choppy.  They could have been a little neater and less wobbly.  For the most part, i think Daniel Craig's face turned out fairly well.  It could have been a little cleaner and more defined but overall it was a cool card and welcome addition to the set.  I ended up using grey markers on his face, red marker to fill in the OO7 and used black pastel chalk to do the shading next to him.

Movies From A to Z: Zodiac

This tracker was my first tracker that i ever hosted.  I really wanted to do something movie themed and to coincide with the Academy Awards.  I basically sent out requests to all my favorite carvers and had them fill up the tracker.  I was going to take whatever letter was left after everyone chose theirs.  I had a feeling i would be doing one of the less popular letters so i already had in mind what movies i would be doing for certain letters.  I chose "Zodiac" because of my love for all of David Fincher's films as well as it was one of the few movies that began with "Z" that i liked.  I wanted to do a card with a movie poster look to it.  I had this idea to do a double embossing where the title of the film would be black and the Zodiac symbol would be red.  This took a little bit longer and was more challenging than i thought.  But in the end it worked out and it looked cool.  I liked how the black embossing almost disappears with the black card stock.  I then had three different images i collected to carve and assemble.  The two main characters and the golden gate bridge were all separate images i found and then pieced together to carve.  I thought it turned out pretty well.  I think Robert Downey Jr's face could have been photoshopped better and his hair got cut off a little but it's a nice card.  I added some fog with a pencil for some of the background and used a grey card stock for my foreground stamps and then pasted the whole thing onto black.