Friday 23 October 2009

Catch-up 2 - ATC's...

As well as Inchies, I've been playing with some ATC's - Artist Trading Cards. These are 3.5" x 2.5" pieces of art, anything goes as you can use any media you want on them. The only proviso with ATC's is that they must only be swapped or traded, never sold. I'm getting more adventurous with them and the last set I made I'm especially pleased with.

 

First one was a Swap for "The Beatles - Song Titles" - I picked 'Day Tripper. I cut a page out of an old UK motoring atlas, inked it over with Distress Inks and tore it roughly into a rectangle before sticking it to an ATC blank. The ticket stamp was part of a clear stamp set I got at Ally Pally in September, it was a collage stamp and I merely cut out the ticket bit, then stamped it all around the edge of the torn map.

The bus was a pic downloaded from the internet and printed out. I wanted to make the wheels more 3D, so painted some tiny brads with black acrylic paint and poked them thru the picture, then stuck the embellie on the ATC using foam squares to raise it up. Finally the title was printed with my trusty old office Dymo reel and stuck on at a jaunty angle.

Second was another swap, "Autumn Leaves". I went to town on this, using Distress Inks sponged all over a sheet of 12x12 and then a series of leaf-outline stamps randomly scattered on the sheet, so I'd made my own unique background. This was then cut into 3.5" x 2.5" rectangles for the ATC's. Three skeleton leaves were glued to the ATC first, the bottoms of which were covered with a piece of twill ribbon which had been stamped with a paw-print design. Finally the title was again Dymo-reel printed, but stuck to a piece of cardstock, covered in sticky metal tape then coloured using Alcohol Inks.

Both ATC sets have been posted off, but we're waiting for the postal strikes to be over before the hostess returns them all to us - I can't wait to see them all!

Good grief where does the time go...

Last post was June and it's now the end of October...I've got some catching up to do... I'll do it in stages, got a lot of pics to share with you all! 

Firstly, Monthly Inchies Swaps... each month it's a free theme but a specific colour. Because we started these in April, right in the middle of Jigsaw-Mania, I kinda went jigsaw mad and decided that all my Inchies would have little jigsaw pieces on them. And as well as little jiggy bits, there'd also be some tiny jiggy bits. I think it's an addiction, one which unfortunately will last into next year lol...

 
April - Purple / May - Orange / June - Green / July - Turquoise / 
August - Red / September - Pink / October - Blue. 

We also sneaked an extra one in for Summer... These will continue for the next few months at least... I've had some lovely Inchies in return for the ones I've made, hopefully I'm going to make an acrylic album to put them in but I've got so many other things on the go at the moment that it'll have to wait it's turn.