ATC Mania!

Ok, so our good friend Rachel Carlson of lost in the attic pointed us to a local gal in the scrapbook world that she found on Craigslist : Cassandra Lucero of The Next Page.
This clever gal has opened up a little studio in a Denver office building dedicated to croppin' & classes! She's got plenty of room for each cropper & tons of tools to use. Plus a plethora of snacks to keep the creative juices flowing! And when we saw that she was offering an ATC class, we hopped on board!

You may ask, "What in the world is an ATC anyway??" An Artist Trading Card (ATC) is a little 2.5x3.5 card that you add your own little artists' touch to one side, then sign, number & date the back.

Then you can trade the cards with other artists, a lot like baseball trading cards, but these are all handmade treasures! Or think of it as  your "calling card" when you meet other crafters that you want to share your passion with! But, I think that the greatest thing about ATC's, besides being small & fast to do, you don't have to reserve them just for a ATC swap! You can easily use them in your scrapbooks & on cards! And, if you attach them with photo corners or something non-permanent, any recipient of that card, can take them off & re-purpose them too!

At The Next Page, we made 4 vintage-style ATC's (like the one's Cassandra made above) using a few different techniques with Glimmer Mist,  Tim Holtz's Alcohol Inks, Distress Inks & Paints. It was great fun & now we are hooked!



I was out the other day & popped into Michaels not realizing that our local store was liquidating their leftover inventory before they move into a bigger location & got some screamin' deals on some Tim Holtz stamp sets for all of us to play on our ATC's with...Here's Kim holding up the loot!

All at 70% off! I paid $5 for each! Insane!!

Although I didn't use any of the stamps on these two, I whipped out a couple cards yesterday & can't wait until I have little more time to do some more!! (Images on the left & background on the right, courtesy of http://itkupilli.blogspot.com/; Nude image was given to us in class) I used a Tim Holtz Mask on the background of the Pin-up girl with Glimmer Mist in Wheatfields. The Renaissance-style bed was the same pink as the girl, so I misted it too with Coffee Shop to make it darker.
For the nude, I used my Wild Plum Alcohol Ink around the edges, then misted with Twighlight. I attached a little jewel to the girl's neck like a necklace, then misted her separately with Antique gold before placing her on the card. So much fun!!

We're hoping to get a little class or swap going as well as putting together some kits very soon! So if you are interested in adding this to your repetoir, just contact us scrapateenygirls & we'll organize something together!

You might also want to check out this book I recently added to my wishlist...Artist Trading Card Workshop. It's full of some wonderful techniques that you can use in all of your crafting as well as ATC's!

That's it for now...I am off the prepare of a bunch of 4 year olds at the house tomorrow! Wahoooo!