Thursday, October 1, 2009

ATC's are Fun!

Over the past few months I've been involved in a few more ATC swaps... I think I'm addicted! I just really enjoy developing a whole theme and expressing it in miniature. Maybe it has to do with my background in miniatures; that was the first craft I ever got in to as a teenager. I used to build dollhouses and dollhouse furniture - loved that, but it requires a lot of space! Scrapbooking kind of took over, but I imagine I'll get back to it one day.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few of the ATC's I've swapped. One really fun swap I joined was an ATC Fairy swap... I love all things mystical, so I was excited to get a couple of spots, and they were worth it, because I received some really beautiful and fun cards back in return. Here are the cards I made:
My photos on these two cards really don't do them justice; there's a lot of glittery stuff going on that you really can't see in the pics. On the stamped image above I outlined all the light lines and the fairy dust in her hands with my stardust jelly roll pen, so it looks very magical IRL; I colored the image with my copics. For the green scalloped edge I just used a very large scallop punch to take off the one edge, then I inked it and added the gemstones. The flowers are prima, and the center is a glitter brad.
This card definitely didn't photograph well; the base and the black layer are both glitter cardstock. The top layer is actually amethyst and the fairy stamp is embossed with a shimmery purple embossing powder. I also outlined the image with the stardust jelly roll pen. The moon was colored with a metallic sharpie paint pen. I used an edge punch to punch the stars so you can see the glittery black underneath. I added a few gems to the wing, but they show up dark in the pic.
I joined an Asian ATC swap and came up with these cards:
For this one I used specialty metallic gold paper and washi paper from Hanko. Hanko makes all kinds of beautiful Asian inspired papers with metallic accents - they look awesome on just about everything I've used them on. I added some QuicKutz photo corners. The image was stamped in red ink and then I did the crackle technique with three layers of UTE; I don't know, I guess I was going for the ancient pottery look - anyway, it looks OK IRL but is another thing that isn't showing up real well in the photo.
More washi and metallic gold paper here; I stamped the image right on the washi paper and embossed with detail gold embossing powder. I used my spellbinders to cut it out and added a prima flower with a gem center - very simple one here (I was running a little close to deadline!). The red cardstock is also from Hanko - it has a great ridged texture.
My next one is sort of funny because it was for a Jewish Holiday ATC swap. No, I'm not Jewish... I was invited to join by the hostess and decided it might be fun to learn a little about some Jewish holidays because I actually have quite a few friends who are Jewish; anyway, I DID learn a lot about different Jewish holidays - I didn't have any idea there were so many, with minor and major holidays. It was pretty cool to research and I received some awesome cards back in return... here's mine:
The holiday my card is based on is called Tu B'Shevat. It appealed to me because it celebrates trees and harvesting; everyone can appreciate the significance of that. It is referred to as the New Year for trees, and typical customs celebrating the holiday these days include planting trees and eating new fruits. Tu B'Shevat starts at sundown, so I brayered a sunset on my glossy cardstock background using three ink colors. The tree stamp is from Daisy Bucket and I accented the branch ends with pearl paint to represent little fruits.
The final group of cards to share was for a techniques based ATC swap.
The technique for this card is called "glitter stripe". It is illustrated in the background. What you do is tear strips and curl down the top edge. You glue them down, then rub Versamark down the card so that it hits all the rolled edges. Then you sprinkle on some glitter embossing powder and emboss. The seahorse was created with a metal embossing plate and black embossing powder - as it was drying I coated it with blue Pearl-Ex and added a stickles eye.
The technique for this card is called "Newsprint Reveal". I was glad to practice it here because I can see a lot of cool uses for this technique. Basically what you do is use a solid stamp with Versamark and stamp the image directly onto newsprint, then emboss it with clear embossing powder. Then you brayer over the newsprint with black (or dark) ink. Rub the ink off of the stamped image and the newsprint is revealed. Pretty cool for vintage inspired work!
The final technique I demonstrated was "Dragged Madras". You create your own plaid background by dragging ink over a straight edge onto your background in both directions. My horizontal stripes are in a very light purple, so they're a little difficult to see in the pic. I enhanced my background by adding some stamped flowers. To keep the focus on the background, I used a quote stamp in the center and enhanced it with a little punched butterfly.
That's it for now - I have two more big swaps to share with you so I'll try to get those up soon - one Disney and one for PAT-12... have a great day!

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