1960s-Inspired Verdigri ATCs

When artist Sonja Hagemann suggested the color theme of verdigri for the January Arts in the Cards ATC exchange, I had to look it up. Well, it is a very cool color, and a very creative prompt. Think of the Statue of Liberty or old copper pennies and you get the idea—the special green-blue that copper gets when it is weathered.

I am in the middle of a huge project—selling our house and moving to smaller quarters— so I had 17 years of accumulation to go through over the past few months. (If anyone wonders why my last blog post was December 2012, now you know why!)

As I was going through the top shelf of my bedroom closet, I found an old glass jar that at one time had some air freshener in it. The jar wasn’t very special, but the top had a pretty floral design cut in it, so I saved it.

For the verdigri cards, I used the jar top as a stencil and applied printmaking paint to watercolor paper. I quickly sprinkled rust-colored enamel powder, and zapped it with a heat gun. I used a combination of two different Lumiere paints to get the verdigris color, then gave it an aged effect with several stamps using Tim Holtz Ranger distress ink in vintage photo. I added some gold dots and gold edging, some chalk and paint here and there to intensify the aged effect. Even though I started with a cookie-cutter 60s shape, each card came out very different, yet they make a distinct group.