Spring Marie with Bird ATC Swap

As I told you Spring has definitely sprung (together with the clocks at midnight) as far as swaps are concerned and the Marie Antoinette Swap Group is no exception! I used the same background for these ATCs as I did for the Alphastamps Spring ATC ones because I made quite a large piece (not at large as Lenna made hers though, check that out here) and also because the collage worked out so well and I felt I needed to make more Spring themed art.

On top of the fabric paper collage I mounted a transparent image of Marie herself. I actually glued this on! Quite revolutionary as far as I'm concerned. I wanted to test my Xyron Creatopia (bought from Create and Craft before Xmas) as Xyron now produce a fabric adhesive cartridge for this. And I can report it works wonderfully well as long as you provide the Xyron with room temperature and by that I mean usual room temperature not the 16 degrees Celsius of our cottage. It prefers things a bit warmer and when you give it that, the glue works simply great. I have already used it for applique on a small quilt, and although I also stitched the pieces concerned down afterwards, it cut out that tedious Bondaweb step. More about my Xyron when I post pictures of that piece (made for a challenge by the Thistle Quiters) in the not too distant future.

Back to the Marie ATCs. One of the requirements was to use a picture of a bird as well as one of Marie and I added lovely birds that came from a paper napkin, adhered with Mod Podge (it was definitely my day for playing with glue!). Vintage text and a corner embellishment (self-adhesive!) was added and the finished pieces were mounted onto watercolour paper. I had distressed the edges of that with sunshine yellow beforehand.

At the top of the blog are the cards for the swap and just above is the one I kept myself entitled: La joie du coeur.