ATCs

I want to firstly thank everyone from the Pennywise Arts Blog Hop who left such wonderful comments on my "Friends" frame I made for the blog hop. The lucky winner of that frame was Sherrie Roberts! I hope she gets her package in the mail soon! It was such a blast participating in the hop I encourage others in our group to try it next time around if they didn't get a change to participate this time. It is amazing how many wonderfully talented people are in our group and I am awed at their talents every time I visit one of their blogs.

I recently made some new ATCs and thought I would put them up on the blog. I have been participating in the Pennywise Arts ATC (artist trading card) swap for about three years?!! (can it be that long?!) now and I just love it. ATCs are a great way to showcase smaller stamps or portions of larger stamps and of course all those great embellishments like brads, eyelets, buttons, ribbon etc. They can be individual works of art or multiples of the same idea. When I like a creation, card or ATC I tend to make them in multiples just because I am fond of the design and layout. Of course this makes for easier trading too, that way more swappers can get a chance to have the same ATC.

I recently used an idea I found in the April edition of Crafts 'n Things magazine page 59 about using a technique called Paint Scraping. Basically I took two colors of acrylic paint and used an old credit card to scrape the paint across a piece of heavy plain white cardstock. I alternated the direction and the colors. The first piece I tried I used blue and red and I think the blue was a little to dark to show the "scrapes", so the next piece I used yellow and red, which came out much more defined and bright. I really like the texture of the paper too. I created an ATC using the yellow and red paper and really felt it looked like a sunset! I found that my regular water-based ink did not seem to set as well however, and it took a couple of days for it to dry completely so I think the next ones I make I will use Staz-on ink which will definitely not smudge.

I also made a few ATCs with a large stamp of a woman holding pearls. I just love the stamp, but it was too long to fit onto the ATC, so I colored her in with markers and then I cut her in thirds (I keep thinking of that magic trick with the lady in the box lol).. I ended up using the first and third piece and leaving the middle piece out and using a piece of ribbon across the middle. She was then covered in sticky paper and clear microbeads.

I found this great bunch of zodiac art that turned out to be nearly the same size as an ATC, so I printed them and then cut them out, and blended many different colors of microbeads to adhere around them with sticky tape. It is so exciting to stumble across a stamp or image that works perfectly in ATC size (2-1/2 x 3-1/2 in.)


Amongst all of my cards and ATCs I found an extra of one of the baby shower invitations that I had made a few months ago for a co-worker of mine. I took a package of thank you invitations and then just covered them up. It was far less expensive to use something that was pre-cut and with it's own envelopes than to buy the cardstock, cut it all out, and then buy envelopes to match. I bought a box of 45-50 thank you cards with envelopes for around 10 dollars and then I used a background stamp in blue and green over the front. I then cut out individual letters spelling baby and then backed each letter with the opposite color. I popped them off the page with popping dots and then stamped the little infant feet for the middle piece. I used small bows of ribbon and glued them underneath. I was a lot of fun, but lots of work since I ended up making 45 of them in all!!

I really appreciate everyone who reads my blog and all of you who have become followers. This experience has been a great one and I hope as I learn more about creating a blog that I will be able to display my photos better. It is still a learning experience for now :)