Blue and White China ATCs

Play time and for me that means making some ATCs or Artist Trading Cards to give them their full name. I'm hosting another swap on the ATCsforAll site and this one is dedicated to Blue and White China. Several sets of cards have already arrived in my mailbox and these cards produced by participants are stunning, so I'm sure this will be a marvelous swap.

Their arrival also spurred me on to produce my own cards and I didn't need to look far for inspiration as we have quite a collection of blue and white china, mainly inherited from John's mother although I have bought some of it myself at various car boot sales and one from the factory in Delft.

But I have also scavenged many, many pieces (and I'm really talking fragments here) from the beach in Largs. This is a little town south west of Glasgow where we lived before we moved to the Scottish Borders. I used to walk our then dogs along the beach (mainly stones) and spend a lot of time looking down and gathering china bits which had ended up there, how knows after how long a journey. We used some of them to decorate a large plant pot but there are still 2 large plastic bags in our spare room, ready for future use.

I was going to use the original pieces but that made the ATCs too bulky so instead I scanned them and then printed them out. The background for the ATCs is a fabric - paper collage on which I used paper napkins in the mix, also featuring blue and white china. The three above are for the swap and I'm hanging on to the one at the top.

Vintage French ATC Swap

The vintage swap I'm hosting on the ATCsforAll site is in full swing with quite a few cards already winging their way to me, so high time to make my own cards.

I started with a fabric-paper collage incorporating lots of vintage French imagery and text. On top more images were added (from Alpha Stamps and Cavellini labels). I then used a large stamp of the Eiffel Tower from Tim Holtz and stamped it 4 times on a transparency sheet, using blue Staz-On Ink.

This was oversewed to cover the entire ATCs as you can see above. The ATCs were finished by zigzag sewing around the edges. The three just above are for the swap and I'm keeping the top one.

For new readers of this blog (and thanks so much for taking the time!), I try and always make an extra item to keep. In the past this has been great when I was teaching ATC classes but it also reminds me of everything I've made over the years, and also makes it easier to part with the other ones!

Vintage Fashion ATCs

I'm hosting another swap on the ATCsforAll site and once again I have chosen something vintage as the theme for the swap. Since doing the Vintage Gluebook class I've really developed even more of a taste for vintage and I'm looking forward to starting the Collage Basics course (like the Gluebook one taught by Mary Green). You can do this class too, just click on the relevant button in the right-hand sidebar of this blog.

For my own Vintage Fashion ATCs I started with watercolour ATC blanks to which I glued pages from a variety of vintage books such as dictionairies, encyclopaedia and music. Once dry I overpainted with gesso, shaded pink with acrylic paint and once that had dried I added buttercup yellow spray paint.

I overstamped the card with a large text stamp and then added the fashion plate images, in the shape of clear tape transfers. They too come from vintage books. The next additions were the black rub-ons (clocks, birdcage etc) from 7Gypsies. I found suitable text for all the cards and antiqued the edges with a Distress Inkpad. The final ATC (shown underneath) also needed a gold Dresden corner embellishment.

Vintage Lace ATCs

I'm hosting another swap on the ATCsforAll site, this time with the theme of Vintage Lace i.e. the cards have to contain some lace (either vintage or new, or can be drawn) and the cards have to give an overall vintage impression. And of course part of the fun is making my own cards for this swap.

I started by using some multi-coloured felt that I had made myself many moons ago. To this I added vintage lace strips and fabric images from a variety of Alpha Stamps collage sheets. I used a hand stitched buttonhole stitch to adhere them, using threads to colour in with my various images. I added a backing fabric (green and white) to which I had ironed Bondaweb (WonderUnder) and made sure I had enough to be able to fold the backing fabric over to the front to provide a border for the cards

I ironed and then stitched this down and added size 11 green seed beads as well. The final touch was the vintage text and the lace flower.

As per usual I made an extra one to keep myself. That's the one shown just above.

Vintage Spring ATCs

These ATCs are the only sign of Spring visible at the moment and I've made them as spring like as I could in order to provide some sunshine in my life. The weather is still unwilling to come up with the goods as although the snow has mostly gone again, it remains very grey, cold, windy and wet.

The ATCs were made for the swap I'm hosting on the ATCsforAll site (there is still time to join us if you like!) and you will recognize the background as part of the same fabric-paper collage I used for the Spring Marie and the Alphastamps Spring ATCs.

On top of this background I sewed transparencies from one of my favourite collage sheets by Artchix Studio i.e. Spring Blossoms which features antique engravings of flower bulbs and insects as well as vintage text. I added the text from the same sheet but this time used the paper variety rather than the transparency. Finally I added green brads (flower shaped) and in 2 cases also a sparkly butterfly. The cards were finished by yellow zig-zag stitching around the edges. The one at the top is the one I decided to keep myself and I named that one S is for Spring. It will form part of my Alphabet ATCs. Not much progress has been made with that series and I think it was because I was doing them in alphabetical order and that meant I was pushing some cards where they did not want to go textwise. So now I'm doing them in random order and this one almost shouted out that it wanted to be the S card!

Vintage Winter Fun ATC Swap

Rather appropriately considering the present conditions I have finished my ATCs for the Vintage Winter Fun ATC Swap which I'm hosting on the ATCsforAll site. The swap is not due till February but all the snow around us has inspired me. I used fabric-paper collage as the background for all the cards and the vintage images are from Alpha Stamps Snow and Snug in Their Beds collage sheets. I further adorned the cards with self-adhesive sparkly stars and machine stitching.

The three shown at the top are for the swap and the one above is for me to keep. I had made the cards and then started leafing through my vintage quotation book and it fell open on the page which at the top had the words Keep a stiff upper lip. It seemed made for this card. I just love these sort of co-incidences!

Napkin ATC Swap

How could I possible resist an ATC swap on the ATCsforAll site with as its theme napkins, that have to be used somewhere on your card. Sadly I somehow managed to miss the preceding napkin swap but as I already have enough paper napkins to have about 10.000 people to dinner (not that I would ever contemplate such a thing!) there was no problem finding a napkin. The difficulty came in making a choice from such a wide selection. But at the top of my gigantic plastic box with all the napkins I found a beautiful purple one which I was given during my visit to the Borders Textile Group several weeks ago.

It was meant to go with my lovely lunch but of course as soon as I saw it, I knew I could not possibly use it for such a mundane purpose, so I whipped it into my handbag surreptitiously! I love the look of those gorgeous purple daisies and they were the prime ingredient in one of my fabric-paper collages which served as the background for these ATCs

I added some beautiful purple Dresden scrap in a circular shape to the cards (from Paperwhimsy) and added a fabric image on top ( from Alpha Stamps The Court of Flora fabric collage sheet). I added size 11 purple seed beads around the image as well. Suitable summer-like vintage quotations were glued on and an additional flower bead (Alpha Stamps) was added with a size 11 seed bead.

Finally the edges were zigzag stitched with purple thread by machine. Of course I made 4 for the swap and one for me to keep that can be seen above. It's lovely to make some landscape orientated cards now and again. Most of mine tend to be portrait, just like my quilts.

Quotation ATC

The Quotation ATCs are now also finished. They were already well on their way and I put on the final touches today. These ATCs are for a swap I'm hosting on the ATCsforAll Site and I can already forsee that this swap (cards due on the 15th November) will be seriously hampered by our ongoing postal dispute here in the U.K. Despite talks yesterday, no agreement was reached and again we are having rolling strikes today, tomorrow and Saturday which means no actual mail delivery on Saturday and lots of things are yet again getting delayed in the mail.

My sympathy is overwhelmingly with my own postie who really is wonderful. He has a huge rural round to content with and does a marvelous job. Such rounds not only deliver the mail but also are a very valued point of social contact. When John was still working my postie was very often the only other human being I saw and talked to all week and I know going on strike is just about the last thing he wants to do. We can only hope things will be sorted out before long and the Royal Mail will see sense. Some things are more important than mere money and profit, and their posties are on the top of my priority list.

Anyway I thought that at least I could make sure my own ATCs are ready and here is one example (they are all more or less the same). The background which can be seen only vaguely is one of my paper-fabric collages which was done with a paper napkin featuring alphabets in all kinds of languages including Chinese. This was cut to ATC sized pieces, layered with felt and machine stitched together. I stamped the woman's face (a stamp I bought ages ago from Ebay and recently re-discovered while searching for something else!) onto a transparency with black Staz-On and again stitched it onto the pieces. I stamped the quotation: We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams (a gypsy saying and the stamp came from Invoke Arts), onto hand-dyed fabric with green Versacraft ink and stitched this on the background. The ATCs were finished by stitching them onto a watercolour background with green thread and a zigzag stitch and finally I added green size 11 seed beads by hand.

Pink and Orange ATCs

After all the views, time for art today and this is one of the things I have been working on during the hot spell. I joined a fabric ATC swap on the ATCsforAll site with as its only theme the colours hot pink and orange.


I was actually sitting outside next to our rhododendron "Fanny" (that really is her name! She lives in a pot as we can't grow rhododendrons any other way) and what could be more inspirational. So I decided to prink out photographs of her in a size suited to ATCs. I printed onto a cotton fabric sheet and then proceeded to make a background using Fast2Fuse and a selection of hot pink and orange batik fabrics as well as orange and pink laces. These were all ironed on and also stitched by hand and machine. The image was stitched on by hand and orange size 11 seed beads were also added.



An orange fabric was ironed onto the other side of the Fast2Fuse and the edges were finished with satin stitching. All 4 cards are more or less identical and I also made one to keep.



At the same time I also worked on an ATC made as part of my Generosity ATC project (see previous post) which was made in the same way but I used a picture on fabric of a beautiful pink gladioli flower which I treasured last year. This card will be winging its way to someone very soon!!

Vintage Nude ATC Swap

"I have danced naked"

As most of you know, I love vintage nudes and as it's difficult to find swaps I always join as soon as I spot one. This one is on the ATCsforAll site and could feature any medium.

I went for backgrounds of fabric/paper collages and selected transparencies (from Alphastamps Nudes #1, 2 and 3 sheets) to be stitched onto these backgrounds.

French seems to be the language par excellence to go with vintage nude images and that's what I used. The text on the one above translates as: "You are my well-beloved one"

"The little courtesane"

"Beautiful female shapes"

And finally here is the one I made to keep for myself with the text: "Yes, you love me"

Mona Lisa ATC

I have been trying to cut back on all kinds of commitments in order to concentrate on a large solo exhibition of my quilts coming up in 2011, which sounds a long time in the future but as one large quilt can take me as long as 6 months is not actually that far ahead.

However, all work and no play make for a very dull time and I think I do better work if I'm happy so I do still indulge in a few swaps and other activities here and there.

One of the things I love to do is host and participate in ATC swaps on the ATCsforAll site and I'm hosting a swap dedicated to Mona Lisa. The ATCs also have to feature fabric in some shape or other. It was about time I made my own cards and this is one of them. They are all more or less identical with only the vintage text on them slightly different on each one.

I wanted to do Mona in Black and White so that I could add a red heart that would stand out. The background is a potpourri of black/white fabrics which were ironed onto Fast2Fuse and free machine quilted with white thread. I also couched down a selection of white knitting yarns.

The background was cut to ATC size and Mona Lisa was added. I played with her a bit digitally to improve her contrast and she was printed onto a new product by Crafty Computer Paper, called Iron-On Fabric Sheets. You print as normal and then remove the backing paper. Put into position wherever you want the image to be and iron, and it's sticking down.

I added the silver moon charm with silver seed beads and sewed on the red heart button. Finally the vintage texts were sewn down as well, a fabric added to the back of the Fast2Fuse and the edges finished with silver zigzag stitching.

A delightful Day

I had a hard time concentrating on work in my studio today as it was such a lovely day, with the sun shining and the daffodils now looking their best. I missed yesterday as I was teaching so I decide to just give in, and I made some ATCs while sitting in the sun, took some pictures of the garden and swapped out the Vintage Romance Fabric ATC swap I hosted on the ATCsforAll site.

Such a stunning collection, it was definitely my favourite swap so far. I even managed to pop down to the Post Office and send them on their merry way.

If you are interested in joining me in another fabric ATC swap, the next one I'm hosting is on Mona Lisa and you can find it here.

You will have to join ATCsforAll but as this is a great site to swap anyway, perhaps you can't resist!