It started snowing here last night about midnight. They are predicting that we could get upwards of 9 inches of snow today with blowing snow and frigid weather tonight and tomorrow. I didn't even open the door to take this picture.
ATC stands for Artist Trading Cards. These are supposed to be no larger than 3½ inches by 2 ½ inches (the size of most any trading card, like baseball, hockey, etc, as well as most playing cards) and can be made of and with almost anything you want. It's a small piece of art to be traded or given away, not sold, to other artists. Originally this was done at face-to-face events but a lot of people now organize swaps on the Internet and through the mail. They are also sometimes used by artists to try a technique or idea on a small scale, kept instead of traded.
I have been admiring
Singtatter's ATCs for sometime, but never tried any. She and her friends do all sorts of different media and I haven't seen myself being that ambitious. But I got to thinking the other day that I've enjoyed decorating the
photo album covers and I had a lot of fun decorating the little
bags. And I have quite a lot of flowers, butterflies and birdies and such from emptying shuttles. Hmm, it could be fun to decorate something small like ATCs.
So I attempted a few.
Tatting and colored pencils
Paper, thread and heart button - oops, no tatting!
Tatting, paper and ribbon
Dove pattern by JoAnn Stearns, 'Joy's Heart' pattern by Wanda Salmans
Originally I wasn't going to put that butterfly on this last one, I was going to write a few words. And I messed up the few words. So I had to cover them up. Oh, well, this is just for me anyway, and I had fun doing it, so all is good.
These are very simple ATCs compared to many I've seen on the Internet, but now I have a lot more ideas to try. What's funny is for some of these ideas I will have to do some tatting made special for them *hehehe*. I suppose as fun is the main reason to do these that's not a bad thing.
"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."
Pablo Picasso
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