Metal and Paper ATCs

Printed tea bag background, copper mesh,
brass mesh, copper foil, metal brads, turquoise
scrapbook paper. Number is cut from Lumiere painted,
heat-distressed Tyvek.

The Paper Traders yahoo group is celebrating their 10th anniversary. So, the latest exchange will be ATCs that include the number 10, and also include tin or some other kind of metal, since tin is the traditional 10th anniversary gift.

I decided to go bold for this project. Sometimes I feel subtle. Sometimes I like girly, lacey, pink themes. But sometimes I like to go bold and graphic and simple. Lacking a fancy machine for embossing metal, or tools to weld little pieces, the only way to really incorporate metal into my atcs was to use big chunky sections.

Using heavy gel medium, I adhered the number to the rusted heart. The number 10 was carefully cut from a piece of painted Tyvek. I used Lumiere acrylic paint and heat distressed it with a hot iron.

The background is my old favorite: printed teabags. The strips of copper and brass mesh were attached with mini brads in metallic colors. The mesh is sewable, but sadly, I discovered that my sewing machine was broken. The broken sewing machine forced me to think of another solution, and the metal brads not only kept the metal on the card, but also added some texture and visual interest.

The little copper strip on the bottom is a stick on tape made of real copper; I found it at the Ink Pad. The turquoise strip is scrapbooking paper that I was gifted with from one of my art friends.