Sweet Valentine ATCs

I love the color pink. I love the heart shape. And lace ...and cherubs ...and vintage images, which pretty much makes creating valentines irresistible.

This year, one of my art groups, StencilClub, hosted a small art trade with a valentine theme. So, I create these sweet little Artist Trading Cards.

First, I took a sheet of watercolor paper, squeezed out magenta and white paint onto my teflon® craft mat, mixed up some delicious pink shades, and sponged the colors through some of my favorite StencilGirl and StencilClub designs.

After it was dry, I cut the stenciled paper (using a cutting mat and exacto knife) into 10 little pieces (2.5" x 3.5") for the ATC base. I decided to keep half of them without any more embellishment, and added lace and vintage images to the other half.

One of my "go to" sites is the Graphics Fairy. They have a huge and wonderful selection of all kinds of vintage images. Along with the Graphics Fairy images, I used a beautiful rose from Gwen Lafluer's website.

For all of the cards, I used sepia archival ink and a fingertip dauber (purchased at The Ink Pad NYC) to finish the edges and add to the vintage look. A happy accident was realizing that I could use a thin strip of the leftover paper, instead of ribbon, to thread through the eyelets on the lace.

For some of the images, I tore them and aged the paper with an ecru stain. I love the antique linen Tim Holtz distress stain, but it is not being made any more. A light tan watercolor or solution of coffee achieves the same effect. After aging the paper roses, angel, and vintage French postmarks, I again added sepia ink to the very edges.

To adhere the lace, flowers and hearts, I used either a glue stick or heavy gel medium.

Here's my set of ATCs...I wonder if my trade partner can guess which one will be landing in her mailbox?

Adorable Folding ATC Dolls

This summer, I joined Stencil Girl's monthly Stencil Club, and have been receiving a monthly shipment of three exclusive designs (small, medium and large) from some of their top designers. They have a Facebook page for club members where we can post our ideas and share photos and tips.

Each month they have a "party call" for members. The September Party Call was to create and exchange ATCs to celebrate the release of StencilGirl's new line designed just for 2.5" x 3.5" ATCs. We could use any StencilGirl designs for our ATCs. That theme was right up my alley, so, I got to work making my favorite kind of ATC--folding ATC paper dolls.

The bodies were made from some stenciled watercolor paper scraps that were leftover from a mermaid paper doll project I did earlier in the summer.

Scraps leftover from the mermaid tails were used for the folding ATC dolls.

I cut the scraps to 2.5" x 3.5"  and added some extra stenciling with a VersaMark stamp pad and Emerald Creek embossing powder.

Next, I used a paper doll template from Retro Cafe Arts and cut scraps of stenciled paper to create the arms and legs.

The outlines and features for the faces are also from a Stencil Club stencil. I added color and detail with water-soluble colored pencil, Derwent Blocks, and Tombow brush tipped markers.

Hair, necks and face color were added to the stenciled face outlines, which were then trimmed to become the doll faces.

Finally, I assembled the dolls by poking a hole through the ATC base and the limbs, then attaching them with a mini brad. The brads allow them to swivel and fold up to fit the required ATC size of 2.5" x 3.5". When the pieces are rotated into position, the ATC dolls are about 4" x 9".

Here's some worktable progress shots of the dolls:

Heads were stenciled and details added with watercolor pencils. The butterfly (for wings) was created by stamping VersaMark through a Gwen Lafluer butterfly stencil onto black paper, then sprinkling on gold embossing powder and heating to melt the powder.

A gold paper Dresden crown was aged with paint and Radiant Rust embossing powder for this doll.

Doll parts were placed in position before attaching with mini brads.

 Here's the final dolls, open and closed:

Interested in learning how to make your own ATC dolls? Later this year I will be teaching a Folding ATC Doll class at The Ink Pad NYC! I'm super excited to share this fun project. Look for announcements from me and The Ink Pad NYC about the date and time.

Back to My Roots

When people don't know what to draw or paint, I usually ask, "What did you love when you were about 10 years old?" Then I tell them to start with that. Going back to what you loved as a child--be it coloring books, finger paint, Play-Doh, mud pies, dandelion bracelets or any other child-like artistic expression--is good for the soul.

Folding ATC doll for PaperTraders "Winner Take All" June 2017 art lottery

I have been through a difficult time in my business life lately, and it put a big strain on my emotional state. So, I took my own advice and backpedaled to my childhood for some art fun. My favorite childhood thing to play with? Paper dolls. For the folding ATC doll above, I used royalty-free reprints of vintage paper doll parts from The Graphics Fairy. The 2.5" x 3.5" base (ATC, or Artist Trading Card) is made of a piece of vintage magazine text that was painted and stamped. The limbs are put together with mini brads, which allows the pieces to be posed and even interchanged with other dolls.

The face is an original that I made using the method from Jane Davenport's Beautiful Faces DVD. I scanned it, reduced it, printed it on card stock, and cut it out. Here's my step-by-step blogpost on how I created the face.

For a folding ATC doll, the rule is that all the extra pieces must tuck behind the base card. Here's what the doll looks like folded up:

ATC doll folded up to 2.5" x 3.5"

Continuing my "back to my roots" art theme, I used an old McCalls pattern piece as a base for a journal collage. As a young girl, teen, and into my 30s, I made many of my own clothes. I still have my favorite patterns from the early 1970s!  After applying (with matte medium) an old pattern as a base on my journal pages, I added some pretty ribbon, printed teabags, a handmade soy batik fabric strip and a mini piece of fiber-art for this two page spread in my art journal.

Art journal left and right spread with old sewing pattern as a base.

The third part of my latest "back to my roots" artistic journey was rediscovering my inner textile designer. In my early 20s, I studied textile/surface design at FIT and worked as a print stylist in New York's Garment Center for nearly 10 years. I "retired" for motherhood, then went into graphic design and writing as a career.

About five or six years ago, I took part in a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) project called "Visioning" and designed and printed my own line of fabric. Many of them are available on Spoonflower.com.

While recently cleaning my bins and boxes of papers and art supplies, I stumbled on some prints of vintage French textiles that I had ripped from an interior design magazine. I was startled at how similar they were to some of the fabrics from my own line. It really had me wondering about reincarnation. The designs are dated 1941, and I wasn't born yet, so who knows?

I used the magazine print on the right side of my journal, and added strips of my fabrics as borders at the sides and top. On the left side, I created a fabric collage of scraps of my own fabrics that struck me as similar.

On my worktable: vintage textile designs on right, collage of my designs on the left.

Reproduction of textile designs dated 1941

My original fabrics, printed on cotton, bear a striking similarity to the vintage 1941 designs.

In Love With Aqua

Aqua has been speaking to me lately. When people ask what my favorite color is I usually say yellow. Then I say pink, then lime, then turquoise. But aqua...the color of the sea, the color of calm...that color is calling to me. It was the color prompt to go with the Paper Traders Altered Rolodex card trade this month, along with the theme of Beach.

I used some painted deli paper and gelli prints for the background, a leftover scrap of layered painted deli paper, a small printed beach photo with the words "we are here" on it, and a strip of commercial scrapbook paper. In the corner I added a bit of an Artistcellar chakra stencil with crackle paint, and smudged a little sepia ink around the edges and over the crackle.

I liked it too much to give it away, so I made another for my trade partner. I was out of the beach paper and painted scrap, but had another printed paper quote: sandy toes, salty kisses. It needed something more, so a scrap of a cutout heart felt just right.

Still on the aqua theme, I made a bunch of ATCs, and one will go to the Paper Traders "winner take all" monthly ATC lottery. The ATC incorporates painted deli paper, gelli prints, stencils, washi tape, part of an old dictionary page, ink and words printed on clear Avery mailing labels.

So the question remains, why is aqua calling to me? Pale blue-green. Why aqua, why now? It is a combination of two chakra colors: blue for the throat and green for the heart. The throat chakra is something I have been working on for years, learning to speak what I am thinking, and suffering through throat constriction and sore throats if I don't voice my thoughts. But green, the heart chakra? Maybe it is that I am at a time of change in my career, shifting to a new location and new responsibilities in my job...and it is a job I love, but there are new responsibilities and expectations. And why the pastel shade, the soft aqua? Could it be telling me to be gentle with myself, not to be such a critical Virgo, not to listen to my inner critic?

Ricola Wrapper Nesting Doll ATCs

 

The wrappers on Ricola candies are almost too pretty to throw away. The little delicate flowers on the original flavor remind me of edelweiss and the Sound of Music. The cherries on the cherry flavored Ricola are even more striking. So, I started saving them and incorporating them into my ATCs.

When Paper Traders yahoo group announced a nesting doll swap, it seemed a perfect fit for me. I love dolls, especially traditional Russian nesting dolls. I set about cutting and pasting to create a unique and original design.

I combined an original design of my own, a tile design (you can see the fabric I made from my tile design here) with some gingham paper and a zetti-ish diamond pattern.

The cherry Ricola wrapper had a nice color and feel to it, so I made sure to use it in the biggest doll and also in the background, near the hidden quote.

Here are links to some of my other ATCs than incorporate the Ricola wrappers:
Splatter House ATCs
and
Fly Free ATC

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.

Halloween Bad Boy ATC





A Dover royalty free image of a vintage Halloween wizard was the inspiration for my series of Halloween 2015 ATCs. This one was my favorite of the four I made, and will trade with the Yahoo Paper Traders group.

 

The background on the right is from some wrapping paper with Day of the Dead skulls that I received as a gift from a fellow artist. The little boy reminded me of one of those little guys who pretends to be sweet when adults are around, but is really a little terror to all the other kids, so it seemed appropriate to have the skull lurking in the background to really scare him.

 

The orangey, flowered background is a collage I created in Photoshop using Day of the Dead skulls (which are partially hidden) and traditional flowers used for Day of the Dead. On top, I stamped a variety of images using white printmaking paint. The final touch was some scary words that were stamped on using tiny alphabet stamps and a black ink pad.

 

 

Flower Fairies and Abstract Art

 

The Yahoo group Paper Traders is having two art exchanges that are very different, but both called to me. One is a Flower Fairy themed ATC trade. I started with some Graphics Fairy royalty free vintage images. Some I combined in Photoshop and printed ATC sized, others I printed individually and used for backgrounds or "fancy cut" and layered onto my ATC blank. One requirement was to add something dimensional, so each has a vintage paper sticker that I was gifted with along with my favorite sheer lace. Below are the six I made; I traded the top three and kept the bottom three.

 

 

The other trade was a 4" x 6" (postcard size) abstract art challenge. I used watercolor pencils, colored pencil and Derwent watercolor blocks on cardstock. I used mostly my left hand (I am right handed) to give both my brain and my hand a rest. I also gave the pieces a slightly different vibe, since I made the strokes sometimes from top left to bottom right...with the right hand my strokes would have been in the opposite direction.

 

 

Turning Marker Doodles into Stenciled Crackle Paste ATCs

 

The background for these ATCs started out as a random art therapy drawing one evening. As my husband watched TV, I sat next to him with a sketchbook full of thick white paper, my collection of TomBow brush tipped markers, a koi paintbrush and jar of water.

First, I made random doodles with some of my favorite shades of blue and green. Next I added a little more color and more doodles, and then added water with the koi brush to make the colors bleed together. 

 

 

Pretty, and if it were a silk scarf, I would surely have worn it. But since it was paper, what was I to do with it?

My new motto, learned from Kelly Kilmer, is “when in doubt, add a stencil or a stamp.” So I took a gorgeous Retro Café Art large flourish stencil and pushed white Crackle Paste through it. I was impatient, so I used some small Artistcellar stencils with crackle paste to fill in the empty spaces, being careful not to smear the flourish section—the mini virtue Tudor Rose hope pocket stencil worked with the flourish stencil perfectly.

 

 

When it dried and the solid white paste turned to a nice crackled design, I loved it, but still…what was I going to do with it?

 

The idea lightbulb went off inside my brain…ATCs, of course! So, using an Artiscellar pocket stencil as a template, I selected the areas I liked best, traced around the template, and made six colorful, textural ATCs. After I cut them out, I glued them to an ATC blank with rubber cement. The final touch was edging them with some purple Ranger Archival Ink.

 

 

 

Tutorial: Faux Lace from Recycled Tea Bags

-ATC Box with paisley stamped tea bag faux-lace,
lace trim and gold dotted accents-

 

Tired of spending a lot of money on art supplies? Here’s a frugal way to recycle and make some cool art and craft.

1)      Save your used teabags. Pull them out of the water BEFORE you add milk, sugar, honey, lemon or any other flavor-enhancer.

 

-figure A-

 

2)      When the bags are completely dry, carefully open them and remove the dried leaves. (The paper is very delicate.) [A]

3)      Flatten out the paper. You will see mottling/staining—that’s part of the fun. Paper will be different colors depending on what kind of tea you use and how long you steep it. [B]

 

-figure B-

 

4)      Choose a variety of stamps—I prefer lacey feminine ones with good detail. You will need to experiment to see what you like best. You can also use hand-carved stamps and/or wooden stamps. [C1, C2]

 

-figure C1, hand carved stamps-
 

-figure C2, commercial stamps-

 

5)      Apply white printmaking paint to the stamp. You can brush it on or use a brayer. (Printmaking paint stays wet longer than other paints.) [D]

-figure D-

6)      Drape the teabag over the stamp and gently press it down all over. [E]

 

-figure E-

 

7)      Gently pull the paper off the stamp. If it didn’t print perfectly, don’t worry…it can often add textural interest to have an imperfect stamp. (I use the imperfect ones for collage and the “perfect ones” for ATCs and tags.) [F1, F2]

 

-figure F1 shows the printed tea bag as it is pulled away from the stamp-

-figure F2-

 

8)      Drape the empty sections of the teabag over the stamp and press. (You will probably get paint on your fingertips. I keep a wet paper towel or rag nearby to wipe my fingers as I work.) I usually reapply paint every other time.

9)      Keep filling in sections until the whole teabag is covered. You can also mix stamps—you don’t have to use the same stamp on each teabag. [G1]

10)   Once the painted bags are dry, you can make all kinds of things with them:

a.       Collage them into one big piece and use it as a journal page or background for other artwork [G1, G2]

 

-figure G1-

-figure G2 has a tea bag lace background overlaid with a
vintage wedding photo printed on sheer silk, with lace and
button trim-

 

b.      Cover a small box with it and decorate with lace (atc box). Be sure to cover box with white gesso first (and let dry) so that the nuances of the printed tea bags show up. [H]. I often use recycled boxes but this one was purchased from Retro Café Arts.

 

c.       Wrap it around an ATC or tag for a base. You can also layer it over a colored paper or fabric background [I1-I5]

 

-figure I1-

-figure I2-

-figure I3-

-figure I4-
 

-figure I5-

 

d.      Scan the design into a photo editing program and manipulate or mix with other images to create very personal art or background papers. [J1-J4]

-figure J1-

-figure J2-

-figure J3-

-figure J4-

e.      Use it as “skin” or a base of a Santos cage on an arty paper doll [K1-K6]


-figure K1-

-figure K2-

-figure K3 used a Dina Wakley stamp face,
Graphics Fairy shoes and tea bag lace arms-

 


-figure K4 uses faux tea bag lace on a large paper doll template from
Retro Café Arts-

 

-figure K5 has a tea bag faux lace base and arms
with Graphics Fairy wings and face-
 

-figure K6 has faux lace arms and legs, an original face
hat made from a recycled, painted coffee filter and
Graphics Fairy butterflies -