Disney ATCs

Although I've never before relied on a sticker to pull the weight of an ATC, I sure did on these. I'm in one Mickey Mouse swap and one Disney swap, and once I saw these beautiful, dimensional fabric stickers I knew I could not do any better. So I am hoping that the fancy matting will make it "count". The rule is to send something that you would be delighted to receive, and I certainly would be delighted to receive this, so I think I'm OK.

Steampunk Swap

This was a fun swap to be in, since I love everything Steampunk so much! I made three of these cards for my three swap-bot partners.

Owls

Here is my owl card for the swap-bot owl swap! I liked including the fawn too!; )

Swap-bot

Wow, I am, and have been, really sick with a sinus infection and bronchitis. The upside to illness is that I've had a LOT of screentime and have discovered www.swap-bot.com. Swap-bot is this awesome place where you can go to swap ATCs and lots of other things too. Of course I am already signed up for a handful of ATC swaps, and I'm also signed up for an April Stash Buster craft supply swap, wherein you get a big envie, fill it with a bunch of craft supplies from your stash, and mail it off to someone else. Brilliant!! I hope to make tomorrow a Make ATCs Day. We'll see how I feel.

Bemidji Springtime

Here's one I just made for my pal Andy, who sent me this incredible hand-drawn Batman card. Since there's no way I could match him in artistic skill, I decided to go for fun instead. Hope he likes it.

A Couple of I Love You Cards

DIY Collage Sheets

Today I was coveting some collage sheets online, when it occurred to me that I could google some images and make my own. So I made two awesome collage sheets - one of Victorian Easter images and the other of vintage sewing pictures - and had them printed onto cardstock with a color laser printer at Office Max. Excellent, excellent print quality! And the best part - a whopping $.60 per sheet instead of the $5.00 ones I was drooling over. Yay for the interwebs! ; )

Budda in my Mailbox!

Today the Buddhism swap arrive and I was again blown away by the creativity and artisty of the participants. Really cool stuff!

Dragons in my Mailbox!

So I got my Dragons swap in the mail yesterday and they are just fabulous! I think my favorite is an embroidered one on fabric! Too cool.

Easter Three

This is my favorite of the three Easter cards I just made. I just love the little girl!

Easter Two

This one is not as successful as the other two, I think because of it's lack of vintage image and my inclusion of all of the confetti elements, but it is still kinda cute.

Easter Cards

Even though Easter was last weekend, I am still in the spirit of things and made three more cards. Here's one of them.

Wow!

I got my first swap cards back yesterday and they are just AMAZING. What a great hobby!

Maximizing Tool Time

When I go over to the Stamp Pad tomorrow I want to make sure I get as much out of it as possible so I think I'm going to focus on creating elements that can then be assembled at home.

A Mad Tea Party?

So I finished up the Alice and Wonderland cards today and got them off in the mail, but there is another swap that is mad-hatter themed that is coming up quick. This is my prototype - I like the card, but not sure if it is "mad" enough...

Button Flower Cards

So I had these shapes from the Stampin' Up demo floating around in my purse and decided to do some little spring cards with them to add to my Easter display. So simple, but I thought they turned out pretty cute.

Lots to be excited about!

• Yesterday I went to a Stampin' Up demonstrator's Stamp Pad and had fun messing around with the Big Shot die cut machine. Tracie said I could come back sometime next week and play with the stamps! Score!!
• Last night I went to my first scrapbooking/papercrafts meetup and had a fantastic time. Everyone was so friendly, the snacks were great, and the workspace was wonderful. Best of all, Jen has a Cricuit machine, Big Shot, and wall of Stampin' Up stamps to use!! I can't wait until next time!
• I just placed an order with Your ATC Store and am totally looking forward to getting my collage sheets, card protectors, ATC kits, and books. Yay!

Ideas

• Make a cupcake card! Make lots.
• How about a circus card?
• Try copying some pictures from Edna St. Vincent Millay book & coloring in with ink
• Get some kid's drawing books from the library and try some original drawings to embellish.

Easter Dreams

Easter Dreams

I wanted to make a couple of ATCs to put in my Easter display, so here they are!

Moulin Rouge ATC

And here it is - my sparkly ATC for the Moulin Rouge swap!

Dragon Card Finished!

So I got a couple new colors of ink and inked in the knight on my dragon cards before sending them out. I think he reads much better with the accents. I only have one left as I sat one in wet glitter glue!

Three New Sites

I just added three new resource sites to the list at the left - Bmuse, Collage Stuff, and Red Lead Paper Works. All seem to feature awesome products for ATCs!

Blooms all done!

Got the spring bulbs atcs all finished up and in the mail! Yay! Now I am inspired to paint the knight on the dragon cards with Smooch ink too...

Reminder

Get a stipple brush and a natural sponge for trying new backgrounds!

Smooch Ink

I just ran across a site offering Smooch Inks for $3.19 a bottle, plus free shipping on orders over $25. Awesome! It's Scrapbook Pal and they seem to have great prices all the way around.

Iris in Bloom

And here's the iris card all colored in!

Imitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery...

So I fell in love with some painted cards that georgia_laura did of some cone flowers but they were all traded. Yesterday I went over to my parents' and my Mom and I broke out the art box. I decided to try out the pastels, and this is what I came up with, It was really fun to try an original medium.

Ideas for Moulin Rouge Swap

So I hit the craft store this morning and got two pieces of fabulous paper for the Moulin Rouge swap - lots of swirls and shine. I also picked up some micromarbles that I think will look fantastic. Now I need some tulle and maybe a picture of a can can girl. Everybody Can-Can!

Got my Inks!

I got my Smooch inks last night so will be coloring irises soon. Yay!

A Book to Covet

Here is a book that was recommended by someone on the ATC group: http://www.lulu.com/content/2470810. It looks fabulous, so it is now officially on my Stuff I Want list. ; )

Iris ATC

I'd really been dragging my feet on how to do a spring bulbs card for the upcoming swap because I didn't have any good ideas. I knew I had an iris stamp from a million years ago, so I pulled it out and started looking at matching and contrasting papers. Voila! I liked how the design elements work together on this one. Now I just have to get paid and buy some purple and yellow Smooch ink so I can finish coloring it in and it will be done.

Techniques site

Wow, I just found an incredible site with about a gazillion articles on ATC techniques! Trish Bee Designs I can't wait to read them all!

New Contacts

I'm so excited - I'm going to do my first trade with someone in the ATC group! Also, I found and ATCer in Durham and emailed her to find out if she knew of any in-person swaps here. She pointed me to an altered art meetup group, which I joined, so that should be a lot of fun!

Alice Card, v.1

So I'm participating in an Alice in Wonderland swap and this is my first design. I used white ink to stamp the black cardstock, found a pocket watch image online and printed it out, and added the running rabbit charm, plus the white penstitching before mounting it on the red mat. I really like the way that mats look, maybe from my years of scrapbooking.

Cool ATC Videos!

 

Ready, Set, Mail!

I just put my first two swaps in the mail and am feeling really happy about it and excited to see what will come back to me. The deadline for both swaps isn't until March 31st, so I'll be waiting a bit, but I wanted to give mine plenty of time to get there!

Buddhism Swap Card

So one of the swaps is on world religions - a different one each month. This month happens to be on Buddhism, which really excited me, as I'm very interested in it and have done lots of reading and group meditation at a Buddhist temple in Chapel Hill. I wanted to make a card that conveyed the energy that emanates during meditation, so I used Perfect Pearls bronze to stamp swirling energy waves over the Leavenworth Jackson lady face stamp. The words say, "meditate, mindfulness, and all are one."

Big Art

I was just reading the fabulous introduction to ATCs Art in my Pocket and the author says that sometimes she makes a larger painting and then cuts her ATCs out of interesting pieces of it. This would be fun to try, especially because my Dad got a big art set for Christmas from my Mom. We could have a painting party and I could try my hand at making some bigger art pieces for cut up. I've never painted before so this would totally be expanding my art horizons!

Shrinky Dink!

I was just browsing through a gallery and saw where someone had used shrinky dink to make embellishments for her ATCs. Brilliant! Try this.

Buddhist Cards

I did a prototype for the Buddhism cards today but the black pigment ink smeared something awful on the natural paper, so for the real cards I embossed them with clear powder. Now I'm just trying to figure out what to write on them:

• meditate to alleviate suffering
• mindfulness is key
• remember who you are
• mindfulness
• breathe
• breathe and be mindful

I like using mindfulness in the wording because the concept means a lot to me personally. It's a skill that I have worked on both in Buddhist meditation and in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Other Card Ideas

Ooh, I need to make some Easter cards! And some ones with photographs of my family & friends & animals, like little tiny scrapbook pages. I have some Easter stamps that would be really fun to work with.

Believe Series Complete

I did it! Finished all 8 cards in the Believe series! I ended up with a couple of right handed wings in the sack of charms so one of them I used to make a pair of wings on the card I'm going to keep, which left one card without wings.

Second Card - Dragons Beware

So I want to participate in the Dragons swap but when I went to make my first card, I realized that I didn't have a dragon stamp after all, like I thought I did. Here is my rendition of a dragon flying menacingly around a castle, and the brave knight who will tame the beast.

First Card, Embellished!

OK, so I put my new Panopolie finds to good use! Here is my first card series with embies. I'm really happy with how they turned out and think that they are now swap-worthy!

Fabric Cards

I just had a new idea for making fabric cards - what if I took fusible interfacing, fused it to the fabric, cut it out in cool shapes, then iron it onto the card? It would be coooool if it all stuck together. Try this, and maybe it would be a good technique to use on the cards for the Quilt swap.

Cool Tag Idea

I just saw a really cool idea for adding words to a card - use a piece of vellum, print or write out the words, and attach with a brad. I might use this on the Buddhist cards. The image is from yourATCstore.com.

Embies!

I went to Panopolie this afternoon and got some new embellishments I want to try on the fairy cards I made yesterday - I got gold art glitter with a Quickie glue pen to give the fairy's wings a little sparkle, plus I got some gold wing charms that I might put on a tag to attach to the card, or I might put them on the card, or I might not use them at all on these cards. I also got this cool stuff called Smooch Ink that I'm going to try drawing dragons with! Here are my current card ideas to try:

• Dragon card - white cardstock mounted on gemstones green. knight, castle, and hills rubberstamps with green smooch ink drawn dragon flying above the castle.
• Moulin Rouge card - gemstone rose cardstock with tulle and satin skirt gathered and attached to the card. how to make legs? maybe cut out of flesh paper, draw on shoes with fuschia smooch ink?
• Buddhist card - neutral cardstock with inked edges; lady's face stamped in brown chalk on bottom right hand side coming off of card; swirl stamp above her rising up and off the card in pearl perfect pearls and a small tag that says breathe on one side and remember who you are on the other.
  

My First ATC Ever!

So I've been interested in ATCs for awhile, but was never quite sure where to start. Last night I couldn't sleep and signed up with two ATC Yahoo Groups and read all of their information. One of them is having a swap with a fairy theme in a couple of weeks and I decided that I'd like to join in. So here it is - my first ever ATC. I used Gemstones cardstock in rose, white cardstock, Perfect Medium, Perfect Pearls in copper, and a ColorBox chalk inkpad to both stamp the fairy image and to chalk the edges of the white card. So fun!

I turned this card into an eight-card series so I'd have five for the fairy swap, one for Bobbi, one for me, and one to trade.