Day Nineteen – Loose Ends

Today I just finished up my extra red, white and blue ATCs from last Saturday's trade. I will have them available for trade at the next Rubber Stamp Convention in July at Carson, CA. They were mostly complete from working on them during the meeting. They just needed some final embellishments. I added some tiny star brads after breaking the ends off. I wish I had thought of using them for the last ones already traded.

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. 

Day Eleven – Seeing Stars

Continuing with working on my June artist trading cards for Saturday, I cut out the patterned and layered tissue papers from yesterday. I chose a kraft brown cardstock for the backing. It's easy using Sizzix die #656332 for cutting several cards with rounded corners.

Then I tore the cut out cards with the two different patterned papers roughly on a diagonal to be combined, gluing them to the cardstock with Golden matte medium.

Next I began trying out some ideas with stencils, distress ink and some fabric and washi tape. I had previously stamped a vintage image of children with a flag for a July 4th holiday theme of red, white and blue. Then I hand colored three image variations, scanned and re-sized in Photoshop to fit ATC size better. Finally, I printed a couple of sheets in color. I'm liking the way the elements are coming together. Tomorrow I'll finish assembling which is the fun part.