I had a blast making these awesome ATCs for another swap through the Frolicking Fairy! If you’re not familiar, ATC stands for Artist Trading Card (not air traffic control 😉 ) and they are mini works of art. The only requirement is that the finished size is 2.5″ x 3.5,” the same size as a modern baseball card. In this case, we each make a set of 8-9 cards, send them in, and get 8-9 different ones back. I can’t decide if it’s more fun to make them or get them.
For my cards, I started by watercoloring a galaxy background onto a 9″ x 12″ sheet of heavyweight watercolor paper. The colors ended up being a little more muted than I expected but, I didn’t let them dry very long before going over with black ink. Plus, I was pretty heavy handed with the black. For this project, I didn’t mind; I really wanted the embossed images to be the star of the show. After the ink was dry, I flicked on some white paint to create the galaxy effect. Then, I trimmed the sheet down into 10 standard ATC sized cards. I used stamps from Viva Las Vegas Stamps to emboss my images, first with a layer of white embossing powder, then with 2 layers of glow-in-the-dark embossing powder. My glow powder is from JudiKins and is not opaque, so to get the effect I wanted, I needed to add the white powder layer first. Have you tried any other glow-in-the-dark embossing powders? I’m curious to see if they are all fairly translucent. To finish my ATCs, I signed, dated, and numbered the backs. This is what they look like in the dark!
These are the awesome cards I got back from the swap!!! I love them all!
Have you ever participated in an ATC swap? I can’t wait to do it again. I want to play with some interactive designs. Maybe even a pop-up box card design! Who’s with me?
