ATC's - Artist Trading Cards

All items are copyright 2009 Robinsunne

Get my ATC crafting book here: The Great Library ATC Swap

WHAT IS AN ATC?

ARTIST TRADING CARDS are miniature 2 ½” x 3 ½” works of art.

These are Artist Trading Cards! et

 

In 2008 the Rockport Public Library in Maine and I partnered in a series of Artist Trading Card Workshops and Swaps.  Once a month, we met at the Library to learn about ATC construction techniques and participate in a voluntary swap. 

We continued our art at the Library in 2009, even bringing paint (and plastic tarps) to experiment with art journaling techniques. It is clear to me that many of the skills used for ATCs csn be easily transposed to journaling as well as scrapbooking and hand making one's own greeting cards.

So in 2010 we have brand new lessons and workshops. It is all under the heading of ATC techniques, but we will take our treasures out as far as we can take them. Come on and join the club!


Rockport Library ATC Club 2010

With

Robinsunne

At the Rockport Public Library, Maine

Held on the 3rd Saturday of each month from 2:00 – 4:00 P.M.

Bring your favorite scissors, glue and supplies, but we will always have the basics on hand.

Join the Library's Facebook page to get monthly notices.

Artists, children and library patrons will sample various art techniques throughout the year. In 2010 we will be learning and exploring 12 new ATC skills. Our goals are to experience the pleasures of making art in community, continue our Artist Trading Card Swaps.

PLUS: Please check out our new ATC trading volume at the Library. This lucious book is a work in progress, a moveable feast, and ever-changing artist trading card swap book! You may come to the library and swap some of your ATCs for cards already in the book. You may even check the book out of the library and take it home to peruse at your leisure!

All are welcome:

persons of any age, every skill level, residents and visitors alike.

 

January 16th: We call it "scratchout". Take a page of print, find your favorite words and scratch out the rest. It is like poetry, a sort of crazy Haiku.

February 20th: Quilling is perfect for ATCs. By rolling up very thin slices of paper and shaping the rolls into leaves, petals, diamonds, triangles and more, delightfully intricate mosaics are formed.

March 20th: Artist Trading Card Party! The room will be set up with several stations so that party-goers can sample and blend basic paint, collage and stamping techniques to create a little stash. Door prizes and refreshments. Bring your cards to trade.

April 17th: Zentangles. Mix the effects of Zen meditation and the delight of doodling with your pen. We will experiment with zentangling in rows and rectangles on our ATCs.

May 15th: There are beautiful, textural, 3-dimensional paper flowers for us to make this month.

June 19th: An exquisite paper cutting technique. If you have a craft knife and cutting mat bring it along. One variation looks like stained glass, another looks like Cuna Molas.

July 17th: Rubber stamp medallions. You won't believe how pretty these embossed "clay" images are, and they are fabulous as embellishments on your paper arts.

August 21st: Experiments with watercolor paints, pencils and crayons. We will be making whole pages of backgrounds to later cut apart for our ATCs.

September 18th: Cloth and metal tape embellishments. We will stamp and sew some great enhancements to coordinate with the words and images on our ATCs.

October 16th: Sewing the Kantha stitch (a simple running stitch) into focal points and surrounding borders.

November 20th: ATC Theaters. This month we will make delightful, ATC sized theaters.

December 18th: Pierced paper. This technique makes lovely, lacy images.

 

  • colored text ATCs

    I got an old book at a library book sale a while ago and planned to cut the center out of the book to make space for some interior art.

    I wondered what to do with the paper I had cut out. I decided to cross hatch over the text with some colored pencils. 
    When that was done, I cut the papers into the standard ATC size and glued them to some cardstock. 
    There was some left over paper so I cut that into circles and rectangles and started arranging them.

    Then I went through my stash and found bits of papers,  some play money and jewels. I had a good time thinking about money and abundance.

    See the faux Lincoln pennies? This was a book about Abraham Lincoln. It all worked out nicely.

  • Blue copy ATC's


    Now here is a fun idea.  I am not through exploring this yet.  It came about when I color copied a "skinny book" page for a copier based swap, (26 copies!).  So for these cards I lay a bunch of interesting, (blue),  papers down on my scanner in layers.  I printed it out on cardstock.  I had cut a 2 1/2 x 3 1/2" window in a scrap paper so that I could move the window around looking for interesting views.  I traced out the card shape, added other cut outs, brads, rubber stamps, a little gold pen here and there and Voila! An ATC!  An interesting thought here is that if you print out more than one sheet then you could cut out multiples and test out different ways of decorating each one.

    Here are two more that I got out of that sheet:  (Don't forget to use the scraps!)

  • valentine red copy ATC's


    These are in the same construction technique as the blue ones above, except that they are ready for Valentine's Day, and they have clear packing tape - one of my favorite finishing methods.   Stickers, cut outs, tape, then brads.

  • and then...

    If all of this seems like fun to you I hope that you will visit my blog http://sunnespot.blogspot.com anytime and visit the Rockport Library when we have Art At The Library.  I can't wait to see you there!


This ultimately cool technique is sooo easy!!  Tear long strips of masking tape lengthwise and cover a piece of cardstock with the torn strips.  Holes, gaps, and raggedy edges are all a part of the look.  Rub the edges down.  Rub just a bit of shoe polish over the whole page.  You will be amazed!  We were.  We tried cordovan, and also brown, which both worked really well.  You could try any color. 


Here I have used one of those art materials that is almost too much fun.  It is metal tape.  At the hardware store it is called heating duct repair tape or something, (back in the painting aisle near the masking tape), and a friend said that at the automotive store it is called muffler tape.  It is basically aluminum foil with sticky backing on a roll. 

On this card I cut out short bits in odd shapes and covered the surface of the card.  Then a friend at an art day gathering gave me this picture of a dragon.  We put mountains into the scenery, (cut to shape in metal tape), and I used a blunt-ish pencil to "etch" in the sky texture.  I glued the dragon on with acrylic gel medium.  Later, when all was dry, I colored the mountains and sky with permanent markers.  We like it.