Only 1 day late...

I'm so sorry I didn't get a post in yesterday. I don't know if it was my computer or the internet, but I just couldn't get it to let me write a new post. I spent a few hours trying to get it to work before I finally gave up. So here I am a day late, with nothing much to share. 

All I have to bring you today is a few Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). I am a member of a swap group called ATC Fun. If you click the name it will take you to the group home page. I occasionally host some swaps there. For the month of January I hosted three. The subjects were Cake, Cardinals and cold. 

I tend to be pretty lenient when I host swaps. I will allow any materials, any techniques, any interpretation as long as the 2.5x3.5 inch size guideline is observed. I didn't get very many players for these swaps. Plus I spent 12 days in the hospital in January, so I extended the deadline to February 15th. That date has passed, and the swaps are closed now. I've exchanged all the player's returns and they are ready to mail back.

Here are photos of my contributions.

                                         Cake...

The base, or substrate of all three of these cards is a poker playing card. Plain uncoated paper ones are available at dollar stores. I covered the card with a piece of old book paper treated with iridescent watercolor medium from Windsor & Newton. I hand drew the cake slice, and painted them with watercolors. Then I outlined and defined with a black sharpie. I also stamped and cut out the words, then glued the whole thing together.




Cardinals...

The background of this card is a mixed media background similar to the one from a few blog posts ago. I will do these again soon, and post about them. The pine tree is a die cut from Wish.com, and the cardinal is from Tim Holtz Mover's and shapers.







And Cold...

The background on this one is from a scrap of paper a friend sent me. I thought the lines of the napkin scrap kinda looked like wind. The snowflake is also from my stash of goodies sent by friends. The snowman is from a set of stamps I've had for so long I don't even remember who made them. I filled in the hat and scarf with glitter gel pens.

I hope if you're interested in ATCs that you will consider visiting ATC Fun, and maybe join in and swap with us!


For Monday's post I will be talking about ATCs again. Stay tuned...

This was truly a mess...aka, what to do with ugly papers.

Today's post was a lot of fun to prepare for. A little background...I am taking over a big ATC swap in the summer this year. To learn more about that, check out the second page of my blog. Anyway, I thought for the spring trade, I would make enough ATCs for every player to receive one, with an introduction on the back. That was a great idea, the current hostess thought. Then she dropped the bomb...the swaps average 40-50 players per swap! WOW!!! I better get busy!

I should confess at this point that this isn't all my idea. I totally followed a YouTube video in my process. My pieces came out totally different than hers! I used alcohol inks instead of india inks, and came up with a completely different look. I will post a link to the video at the end of the post.

So let me begin by saying this. If you only make one sheet, this process should only take an hour or two. Knowing that you can get 16 ATCs from every 12x12 sheet of paper though, I made 4 sheets. It took me a couple of afternoons to get these all done, and I decided to skip the last couple of steps in the tutorial because I don't have a roll of drywall tape that I can get to, and I don't feel that heat embossing is going to add much to the end result. Basically, they are screaming at me that they are done.

Without further ado, lets jump in. Do you have any paper you are just not that crazy about? If you answered no, you've purged it all out, or you're lying to yourself. Personally, I have quite a bit of ugly paper. I usually buy patterned papers by the 12x12 pad, and there's always two or three patterns in the pad that don't get used because I just don't like them. I used to wonder what to do with them. I've given tons of them away to grade school teachers in the past for use in the classroom. I probably will continue to give 'ugly' papers and other things I will never use away periodically, but I will be making a point of keeping some around for this and other techniques in the future. So begin, by pulling out a sheet or two of paper you know you're never going to use. Here's a photo of the one I chose.

This came in a pack of 25 sheets from Tuesday Morning. I have no idea what I bought it for, or what I had previously used it for. It's really not my usual style though, so it's a perfect candidate for the ugly paper treatment. It comes from a company called GCD Studios. The grouping is called Country Charm, and the specific pattern is called Item 1510, Strawberry Jam.



Before I started, I got out my pencil and ruler, and laid out my cutting pattern on the back of my paper.

If you lay out four 5x7 rectangles, there will be a two inch square left in the middle. Then measure each 5x7 inch square into four 2.5x3.5 inch ATCs. Total 16 ATCs.


The first thing I did was slap on a couple of thin coats of gesso.

This isn't card stock, it's just patterned paper. It's going to need some help to take the beating we're going to give it. We don't want necessarily to completely obscure the existing pattern though...so a couple of thin coats should do it. It will keep the paper from disintegrating from the next steps, but will leave a bit of background for texture and interest.

The next thing to do is select a stencil or two. I sorted out several as I was doing so many sheets.

As you can see, I'm not always diligent about cleaning my stencils before I put them away. LOL I don't know anyone who is. The one in the center there has a nice coating of Dylusions spray ink...hmmm. If you don't have stencils, use whatever strikes your fancy to create some texture.

So the next step is to get out your texture paste, modeling paste, joint compound or whatever putty medium you use to create texture. You will also want a putty knife, pallet knife or old credit card for scraping the paste through the stencil.

Most of my stencils are 7mil. That is a measurement in that industry that means just over a millimeter thick. That pile of modeling paste probably covered about half the sheet, and the larger pattern of the stencil twice.

I would also like to point out here that it's a really good idea to thoroughly dry each layer between applications.

A heat gun is not the same as a hair dryer, for any novices reading the blog. You could use a hair dryer for this, but please don't ever try to use a heat gun on your hair. It's much too hot and could result in injury!

I found this one in floral. It was the only one they had in the store. They didn't even have one in the stamping area with the heat embossing powders. It was with the shrink wrap for making gift baskets and such.

Here are my results after adding texture paste...

 

I left the texture paste to dry overnight. I wanted to make sure the paper and paste were thoroughly dry. You don't have to do that though. You can totally heat it up with the heat gun and dry it out in a few minutes. I saved these two views for last so you could see what the spay ink on that dirty stencil did. It looked kinda cool imho. What do you think? Let me know in the comment section!

 












The next thing I did was to spritz them with Dylusions sprays. I just used two colors per sheet. I didn't want to get too many layers and end up with mud.

 

 

I did use a sheet of paper towel to mop up some of the spray ink. It was a bit puddly in spots, and I didn't want to wait forever for it to dry. My paper towel came out real pretty too!

After hitting the sheets again with the heat gun to be certain this ink was dry, I started choosing colors of alcohol inks to go with the Dylusions sprays. I used four or five colors on each sheet. I dripped a few drops of ink in the area I wanted to color, then used a mini mister with 91% rubbing alcohol to make it a bit more liquid so it would run real nice. Here are the inks I used, and the results of the runs.

 







These inks are from Ranger industries. I used Celery, 
Eggplant, Meadow, Stream and Sailboat Blue.

 







Here I used Watermelon, Ginger, Caramel, Slate and Currant.

 Mushroom, Currant, Red Pepper, Cranberry and Wild Plum.

This last one I used Sailboat Blue, Stream, Wild Plum and Eggplant.

Now I will just drop the video in here. It is only 10:33 long, so no afternoon commitment is required, I think you can see from the preview image though that my results are much different than hers!

I encourage you to play creatively today. Use whatever it is you have to play with. If there's a supply you have that you want to try, go for it. Any supply I used can be substituted somehow, or even made at home. There are tutorials on YouTube for homemade spray inks, alcohol inks and even homemade texture paste! 

I hope you enjoyed today's blog post. If you did, leave me a comment and share with your friends! Thanks for stopping by!