ATC Madness

I have been making ATC like crazy lately, and I love love love to collect them!

Here are some pictures of what I have been working with lately. I have a bad habit of forgetting to take pictures of the cards once I am done and they are ready to send. So, most of these are still in various stages of completeness.

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Saint Patrick's Day ATCs

Hello wonderful people! In todays blog post I will go over the steps I took to make these cute little Saint Patrick's ATCs! I think that they came out really really well! But I will let you be the judge of that. 

Supplies:

Corrugated Paper

Gold Leafing

Repurposed Tagboard

Quickie Glue Pen

Glue Sticks

Double Sided Tape Applicator

Embossing Powder

Chalk Pastel 

First, I printed out the images that I would like to use. This is the St. Patrick image that is the focal point of the ATC. I thought about doing one with rainbows and maybe a pot o' gold but I wanted to think outside the box. I wanted to make something that is totally unlike anything that people would have in their collection. 

I took the images that I printed out and mounted them onto a heavy cardstock (this was actually packaging from vellum - so "found" cardstock). I used scissors to then cut these out. I think I did a pretty good job. It can take awhile for more complicated designs, but this one wasnt too bad. 

Once that was done, I took the Quickie Glue Pen and drew around St. Pat's halo. Working in sections, before the glue could dry (aka turned from blue to clear) I added the gold leafing onto the surface. Once I went all the way around the halo I let it dry completely (long enough for me to work on the five other halos) before taking a soft brush to the leafing and knocking off the extra that had not glued down. I really like the glue pen because it allows me total control of where the glue goes. This is amazing! 

Then, I moved to working on the backgrounds of the cards. I used corrugated white paper (found this at Crafter's Warehouse in the clearance section) and double sided taped that to the repurposed tagboard. Interesting story about the supports. Have any of you ever ordered stamps from the USPS either online - or over the phone? Well, when they send the stamps, there is a piece of this tagboard in the package with them. It is not too heavy nor too light. Love love love this stuff! 

Next, using the glue pen again, I went down one edge of the card, and before the glue could dry, I applied gold embossing powder. Then I heated that powder and moved onto the next side of the card. Did I say that I made 5 of these? Once I was done with that whole ordeal, I moved onto the chalk pastels. 

The chalk pastels I have are full sticks, square in shape. I just took this and ran it up and down the ribs of the white paper. Then using a soft brush I blended them into the surface. This created the background for my St. Pat icon. 

I used double sided tape to stick down the image to the background and TADA I have 5 wonderful ATC to trade. I ended up keeping one just because I liked it so well. I usually do not make series of 5 but I think that I might start doing this more. Especially with the more popular themes AKA steampunk, bookpages, any holiday etc. 

Thanks for reading!