Day Thirteen – Fair Trade

I completed 15 artist trading cards for my Long Beach ATC group that meets at Lyons Art Supply downtown. I took the remaining card parts and worked on a few more for future trades at the meeting. Lunch, lively conversation and trading cards with eleven other artists makes it a little distracting for getting too much done so I just take enough to keep busy. We also walked to a nearby recycle store, LB Depot for Creative ReUse, where I picked up a few things including what looked like accordion folded drapery samples that I can see using for binding pages in for handmade books and journals.

The theme this month was "red, white and blue." Pictured above is a summary of the steps from Days Ten, Eleven and Twelve to make the cards and a closer view of three finished cards.

Here are all 15 card variations created. I used Tim Holtz Seasonal paper to cut out tiny embellishments and Sakura gel pens to add accents here and there. The cards were met with some nice comments from the group. I came home with a really nice collection of traded cards which almost everyone stuck to the theme.


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Day Twelve – Red, White, Blue

I spent most of today finishing 15 artist trading cards for Saturday's meeting which should be enough. I will have 5 to work on at the meeting to have a few leftover for the Carson Rubber Stamp Convention ATC trade in July.

Shown here are my collage sheets printed from my original hand stamped and colored images. I adhered them to cream cardstock with Golden matte medium then roughly separated them. Then each was cut out with more detail. 

Here's another shot of the assembly line adding washi, fabric and lace tape. I used distress ink and blender to age the trims a bit. With some family feedback, I decided to place the star and lace trims horizontally behind the main images instead of vertically. Bubble wrap scraps were adhered to backs to add some dimension. 

They always take longer than I estimate when having to do several at a time. I will post a photo of the finished variations tomorrow. 

Metropolis ATCs

My ATC group's theme for September was Movies. I made 10 cards, each different this month choosing my fav 2 Sci-Fi movies starring robots. Here are my 5 from Metropolis. It was a lot more fun doing each different. What the camera didn't pick up is the added collage gears are very shiny metallic cardstock. For some of the Marias I did a clear tape transfer with metallic foil paper on the back. They ended up looking like foil stickers.

Forbidden Planet ATCs

This month my ATC group's theme was Movies. So I chose my 2 fav Sci-Fi flicks featuring robots. I also decided this month to only make 10 and each one different instead of all the same. Here are the 5 I did for Forbidden Planet with actual quotes from the movie.

Mermaid ATC

I recently joined an Artists Trading Card group and this is the first one I made for the swap for August 2013. These are 2.5 x 3.5 inch artist trading cards that you make several of and trade with other artists so then you have a collection. I made 25 which was way too many for this group but I'll have some left to trade another time or with other groups. I also found out that I didn't have to make them all the same but it's ok to. The theme was "beach." Without getting to technical, I used some recycled materials such as Pendaflex file folders that were being trashed at the office, aluminum soda cans both die cut to card and tag shapes. Rubber stamps, ink, embossing powder, markers and gel pens were used for images. The recycled metal die cut tag frames inset with mermaid collage elements were finished off with Glossy Accents by Ranger. Pearl Paint beads completed the string o'pearls.