The Golden Age of Hollywood: James Cagney
This was for the Golden Age of Hollywood tracker.  I love anything to do with film so this was an easy choice to sign up for but picking one icon was very difficult.  I had so many choices in mind but ultimately settled on James Cagney because of his place in cinema history.  This was a pretty simple carve of one color.  I used a grey card stock to keep with the black and white era which he was in.  I think it helped keep it from being too stark and overpowering if say i had chosen bright white stock.  The carve wasn't bad but could have been a little cleaner with the shadowing along his face.  But i do like the way his face turned out.  I put a bio about his life on the backing.  
 

Holy Grail, Monty! : The Holy Hand Grenade
This was for the Monty Python Holy Grail swap.  There were so many funny moments in this film that it was hard to decide what to carve.  I loved all the characters and had a few others in mind but i decided to go a little simpler this time.  I always thought the idea of a hand grenade that was blessed to be hilarious.  I used a brown ink to do all the outlines and lettering then i  filled in the grenade with a medium brown marker and a grey marker for the metal.  I used a darker brown pencil for the shading and a red pencil for the crystal.  I used a marble card stock for the background because i thought it was kind of older looking and invoked that regal type feeling to it.  I was pleased with how the lettering turned out.

Music Artists <3: The Black Keys
This was for the Music Artist tracker.  I picked the Black Keys not only because they are one of my all time favorite bands but because they are from my home state of Ohio.  It was pretty difficult to find a great image of both of them together that worked in the smaller context of an LTC.  I eventually got one after scouring hundreds of pictures.  I really wanted to do something just black and white with their name predominantly on  the front.  This was a pretty simple carve with some light shading used with pencil and marker on their hair and jacket.  The back of the card had some info about the band.

How I Met Your Mother:
Ted Mosby, Architect
This was for the HIMYM swap.  I chose this image because i wanted to do a main character and this episode was one of my favorites.  I thought of doing sort of a magazine cover for Architect Magazine and have Ted Mosby be the star.  There are actually two stamps.  The lettering and Ted.  They were pretty much straight forward.  The only thing i added was some colored pencil to the shirt and for his flesh tone.  I used a grey marker to shade his face and fill in his hair.  

Movies By The Numbers:
United 93
I ended up adding another card to my tracker since a couple people dropped at the last minute.  I always thought this image was so striking and since the movie is so powerful and sad, that i thought I might never be able to do something like this again.  So I decided it was fitting since the movie did have a number in it and i wanted to do something to honor and respect the victims of this terrible tragedy.  I wished the transfer though had been a little better.  The lines weren't as clean as i had hoped but in the end it still turned out well.  I stamped the image in black on a powder blue card stock.  I used green marker to color in the Statue.  

Movies By The Numbers: 
3:10 to Yuma
This was for my second tracker that i hosted.  I had done a similar movie themed swap the year before for the Oscars and i thought i would do another since the first one went so well.  There were so many great choices to choose from and i narrowed it down to about five before finally settling on Yuma.  I just always loved western movies and the new version with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale was such a great remake that i ended up picking this title.  I love trying to do stylized poster renditions of my cards.  I want to make them either look like little posters or covers to books.   I ended up finding this great old textured paper and I used a roller edger to make it look like an old WANTED poster of that era.  Then i used a darker brown ink edging pad to do all the borders.  The title was a separate stamp.  I thought the line work wasn't too bad except that the train and the tracks could have been a little more thinner and cleaner but overall this was one of my favorites to do.

Downton Abbey: Mr. Carson
This was for the Downton Abbey tracker.  The funny thing about this swap was that i signed up for it because i heard it was a great series and it was getting a lot of buzz but i had not watched one single episode yet when i did this one.  I pretty much picked blindly among the characters based off of how many episodes they had done on the series.  I looked up the episode listings and found Mr. Carson was among one of the main characters so i chose him based off of that.  I ended up finding a great image on the web site and just went with it.  Months after sending it in, i finally watched the series and got hooked.  And looking back on it, i would have still chose Mr. Carson even after watching all the episodes up to this point.  I ended up adding a regal sort of corner punch to help make the card a little more interesting.  It was a simple b & w stamp with a little grey marker for some shading.

Marvel Universe Heroes:
Iron Fist/Danny Rand
This was for the Marvel Universe LTC tracker.  I have always loved comics and the Marvel Universe is my favorite publisher.  Choosing a superhero from this field was particularly difficult.  I decided to go with a little lesser known hero and go with Iron Fist only because i always liked the martial arts and mythical background of this character.  I thought i originally had a good transfer for this image but in the end, i was a little disappointed in the line work and some of the shaded areas.  I liked the color choices but i think it could have been cleaner and crisper with the carve.  This was a simple black inked image and then i used colored pencils and markers to fill in the rest.

Sherlock Holmes: 
A Game of Shadows
This card was for the Sherlock Holmes tracker.  There are so many variations and incarnations of Sherlock Holmes nowadays and one of my favorites was director Guy Ritchie's take on the sleuth.  I love Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal and there were many images to choose from.  I was happy for the most part in how the face turned out but his vest and scarf underneath his coat was a bit of muddled mess.  There wasn't a good clear contrast in the transfer and it was hard to discern from the original image but it still came out fairly well.  I found this great paper which had all sorts of old writings and blotchiness to it.  Each card then had a unique look to it based on the area of cardstock i chose.  It's just black inked image with the paper coloring coming through underneath.