Well . . . you might have known I was quite excited to receive my prize pack in the mail earlier this week and so last night I sat down and made myself my first ever 'ATC' - Artist Trading Card.
For those that don't know what they are here's a little information I found online:
Artist Trading Cards are individual art miniatures which can be passed hand to hand.
Artist Trading Cards are typically made on a base of card stock. However, ATCs have been created on metal, stiffened fabric, plastic, clay, glass, balsa wood, leather, embroidery canvas, acetate, heavy watercolor paper, and many other materials. The art on the cards can be done in any media: textile arts, pencil, watercolour, acrylic, oil, collage, scratch board, mixed media, assemblage, digital art, calligraphy, beadwork, rubber stamps, carved soft block stamps, pen and ink, colored pencil, airbrush, pastels, and many others - anything artists use.
As you can see . . . this is why they appealed to me . . . you can use anything, create anything AND you end up with a collection of tiny works of individual art. All ATC's measure 2.5 x 3.5 inches - the same size as a 'general' playing or collectable card - so that gives you some idea about how small these pieces of individual art really are. The general 'rule' with ATC's is that they usually aren't sold, they are exchanged with other ATC creators, BUT for the moment I'm just going to create for my own personal collection . . . who knows where it will lead though!
Anyway . . . winning the ATC prize pack inspired me to make my very first ATC and I have to admit, I did have a great time. I'd recently got some 'sparkle' 3D sheets to use on cards and I decided that the poppy image from one of the sheets was just perfect for an ATC. (Note: The colour is a little 'off' in a couple of the close-up photos BUT the poppies are red - just like in this image)
I actually had a brand new pack of playing cards that I'd never used and decided that these would be perfect for my backgrounds. I inked the edges with black Stazon Ink and offset the 'Poppy' background image off to one side.
It was then just a matter of cutting out all the remaining flower elements, shaping them (using my 'old' Paper Tole tools) and layering them onto the main image using my Helmar - Liquid Scrap Dots - I just love this stuff for free-form layering like this!
The butterfly was cut from the transparency sheet that was included in my prize pack - I just left a thin clear border around the whole image and then folded it in half. Once I'd made sure that my poppy flowers were completely dry, I then sewed my butterfly into position using some DMC Embroidery Thread that I also wrapped around the centre of the butterfly to create what looks like it's body.
The final thing I added to my ATC were some words which I had created a while ago in Photoshop - I just created a 6 x 4 inch background (so that I could print it as a standard photo), filled it with black colour and then typed WHITE text . . . I just randomly sat and typed a heap of words (repeating many of them as well) so that they filled the image. Now I can quickly and easily cut out the desired words I need for my projects and when required, just print the image again to give me more words!
So there you go . . . my first ever ATC . . . will I be making more? I'd defintely say yes . . . this one was lots of fun and because of it's size, was a relatively quick project to do too! Stay tuned for more ATC's to be featured in the future!
Until next time . . .
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