WIP ATCs

Here are three ATCs I made for a personal trade. The theme: Under the Sea. First, I cut printed papers into strips and glued them on to ATC blanks with a glue stick:
Next, I smeared on off-white acrylic paint, put on a few accents with permanent markers, and covered the cards with two different acrylic glazes; blue on top, brownish on the bottom:

Then I used solvent ink over stencil waste to add some "bubbles." I drew fish, an octopus, and a mermaid on copy paper (used stamps for the mermaid's hands and tail), colored them in with markers, and glued them onto the cards with gel medium. I painted tissue paper for seaweed, and added a few highlights with gel pens. Then I stuck on a few words with my label maker:

Very fun to make! The end result was a lot different than I expected in step one, but I like them a lot.

Stamp Fulfillment

Last weekend I needed some stamps. I went to the post office, even though it was closed, thinking I could buy cute stamps from the stamp machine. No such luck. They took out the stamp machine and now have some ATM-looking thing that sells postage stickers for Priority and Express mail, and sheets of the not-so-attractive Forever Liberty Bell stamps. I got a sheet of these, but was disappointed about it (I've been wanting more of those Star Wars stamps).

Well, later I read online that the cost of mailing a letter will go up to 42 cents in May. So those ugly forever stamps aren't looking so ugly now. I also found out that you can buy stamps online from the post office website (usps.com). They charge a dollar to mail your stamps, no matter how many you order. I ordered me some cute stamps! Plus some more forevers, plus a bunch of one cent stamps. Looking forward to getting these cute stamps back from mail art trades.

My order came in today. Return address: Stamp Fulfillment Services, Kansas City, MO. Boy do I feel fulfilled. Plus, each sheet of stamps comes on a nice, clean piece of cardboard *perfect* for cutting up for chunky 4x4's :) Even more fulfillment.

Altered Playing Cards

This week, perhaps as a result of having such a clean desk, I've done LOTS of ATCs and several altered playing cards. The playing cards that I posted on ATCards.com have traded really fast. I've enjoyed making them, but I started to wonder -- how much do you need to alter something before you call it altered? The deck of cards that I've been "altering" is beautiful to begin with -- so it feels almost like cheating to use them. But just ALMOST :)


I got this deck of cards when my mom and I visited London a couple summers ago. We saw The Tempest in the new Globe and I picked up a deck of The Famous Shakespeare's Flowers Playing Cards as a souvenir of making it through standing up in the sun for an entire Shakespeare play. Each card has a painting of a different flower, plus a Shakespeare quote. At first I didn't want to even play with the cards because they looked so nice. I got over that, though!

One night I took the cards to someone's house and we played a Russian card game that doesn't use cards lower than 6. We took those cards out of the deck and then I completely forgot about them! I didn't see that person again (a friend of a friend of my husband's) so that left my lovely deck incomplete and unsuitable for any game other than durak.

When I saw a swap for altered playing cards on ATCards.com, I knew exactly which deck of cards I wanted to alter. I thought, if I can't play with them, I might as well paint them :) So I started altering these already pretty cards. First, I used sandpaper to scratch up the surface a bit. Then I used twinkling h2o paints to color the background. On some of the cards I used fine point pens to outline the flower paintings. I used ink over sequin waste to make some interesting circles. Then I used eyelets, gel pens, stickers, and a label maker to add some accents. I'm trading them in one-on-one trades and can't wait to build up a whole deck of altered cards!

New Year's Resolutions

This year I decided to make some resolutions. I kept them pretty vague so that I would be able to actually keep them for a month or two.

I noticed in Cloth Paper Scissors that many people made plans of doing an ATC a day for a year, or an inchie a day or an art quilt a week or whatever. I thought about making a resolution like that, but figured I'd bomb out in no time. I just don't like feeling like I HAVE to do something. So I decided to just make a resolution to do something creative every day.

Well, that sounded alright and I did it for the first few days while I was visiting my parents, and even on the day when we drove 12 hours to come back home. But once we got back to our apartment, I realized that my simple little resolution would not be so simple. Why?? Because my "creative space" (a 2x6 table in our computer room) was a disaster. I tell myself that I'm messy because it helps my creativity to have all of my "tools" out at all times, but I had gotten carried away. The table that seemed HUGE when we bought it was covered with the aftermath of many many projects and in the actual flat space available, I could just barely fit a 8.5x11 sheet of paper. So this led to resolution #2: CLEAN UP!! I took a before shot to document my progress. A real mess.
Needless to say, it had gotten to the point where I could no longer work here. I didn't even really want to be in the room with that mess anymore! I could barely get into the chair, I had to shuffle piles of stuff around in order to do anything, my super cool altered rolodex was more of an obstacle than a decoration (and practically useless as an address file), and even though it seemed like all my supplies were out, I could not find anything!! Clearly, something HAD to be done.

After sorting out paper to keep for projects and paper to recycle, trash that might find its way into artwork and trash that was just TRASH, I could actually see the floor. My husband seemed pretty impressed with my efforts even at this early stage (I guess that says something about his opinion of me as a houskeeper, haha). Then I went on to some fun cleaning up: sorting through teeny bits to go in my little drawer unit, flipping through my ATC collection while butting cards in to boxes, filing images into a shoebox, and organizing the funky fibers that nice folks from ATCards.com had sent me. This was really enjoyable -- I cut up some of the cardboard boxes from the TRASH trash pile and wrapped the cool pieces of yarn onto them. I think they look pretty happy in their new home, and I'll probably be way more likely to actually use them now that they're not squished up in envelopes anymore.

I grabbed a few of my favorite books from our overstuffed bookshelf and put them in a crate, along with some inspiring magazines, and put my shoebox of images and basket of sewing notions on top of the crate. This freed up a lot of space, and I can always shove the crate on to the floor when I start a big messy project. Now my rolo file is a lovely centerpiece at my table, and I can really enjoy flipping through the cards.

I got a set of stacking bins for larger items, things that plug in, and made the top bin into a mailing station. It's got all my stamps, envelopes, used envelopes, ATC sleeves, and note cards. So I'm ready for some mail art now :)

Here's an after shot. It's not perfect, but it sure is an improvement. My sewing machine is still living on the floor, and my set of drawers is still covered with a pile of who-knows-what, but, hey - it's a start.

My first post!!

Got the first post jitters :) I'm not sure what to write, but I'm thinking the second post will not be as intimidating as the first, so here goes!