SAW 2013 ATC Swap Gallery

Our Artist Trading Card (ATC) swap during Sherwood Art Week was a great success again this year. 

This is the second year for the swap and hopefully it will run again during Sherwood Art Week 2014. 

We had a real mix of mediums including photography, fabric, printmaking and papercraft, even a bit of mini-knitting.  Artists made ten cards each and a random swap was carried out after a networking event where we got to enjoy everyone's efforts.

Here are some of the cards made for the swap, including some close-ups........

Fun With ATCs - Stripes

Fun with ATCs theme this time is 'Stripes'.

The windmill stamp (Claritystamp) is a great image and is full of stripes so I thought it would be perfect for this piece.  The windmill also set me off with the colour scheme, although it's probably not authentic Delft blue!  The image was stamped in Versafine permanent ink and coloured partly in Distress Markers

I created a background of stripes in dfferent shades of blue using Distress Markers and a rubber stamp stripe made from off-cuts from a sheet of red rubber stamps.

I save loads of these off-cuts in different random shapes, they come in really useful for backgrounds and it seems so wasteful throwing them away.

The background was wrapped in torn vellum and the main windmill image was secured with foam pads.

An embellishment was added, made from a brad blank (Papermania) and a tiny laser cut tulip coloured blue.

I know I am only supposed to submit one entry to the ATC challenge, but couldn't resist, I just had to make another one - this time in landscape.  I think I like it better!

Learning to Brayer with Ink

Ah, the humble brayer! 

What could possibly be so difficult about using one?  Well, you wouldn't think it was all that difficult at all when watching others get perfect airbrushed looks with a few spins of an inked up brayer.  I was convinced that much like other new crafting equipment I just needed a few goes, a little bit of practice and voila!

However, frustrated with all my attempts, my brayer was resigned to flattening down and removing air bubbles while sticking papers to book boards.  Very useful it is too but now covered in glue, so totally useless to ink up with, unless I'm going for a textured look.

So, what's the problem?  I get stripes where I don't want them, uneven blotchy and patchy ink, I don't seem to be able to blend colours, I have also managed to pick up texture from the work surface and transfer it to my work.  The process of inking the brayer was also a problem as most of my ink pads are much smaller than the brayer - it's virtually impossible to ink up a brayer evenly with a dewdrop ink pad.  Even with a larger ink pad I often end up inking the table in the process.

Signing up to a workshop with Clarity, I was hoping to learn a few brayering tricks.  Thankfully my workstation tools on the day included a brayer!  It also included a Sploge Mat, which I had been hearing lots about.......

Inking up the brayer using the revolutionary Sploge Mat meant no streaks on the roller and as ink can be applied directly to it, you can use any size and shape ink pad.  

Removing excess ink onto a piece of scrap paper allowed me to build up the colour gradually and gave a much more even finish.  Applying the ink by gently spinning the roller (with no real pressure) starting off the actual work on scrap paper and moving diagonally across the piece prevented lines picked up from the side of the card and gave an even application of ink.

Following the instructions in the class it was obvious that two of my main problems with this technique was having too much ink on the brayer and pressing down too firmly.

I was pretty pleased with my final brayered pieces on the day, althought they weren't perfect they were much better than anything I had ever attempted before.

 

Using Clarity card, which has a coating that allows ink to stay on the surface a while before drying allowed much better blending, especially when using two or more colours - although it can be a challenge for an impatient stamper!  Most of the card in my stash is non-coated or the coatings are designed to soak up the ink and give a beautifully smooth surface to stamp on, so this could also explain to my previous rubbish attempts at brayering.

 

I have been practicing and experimenting since getting home, with a Sploge Mat and different types of card stock.  These images were going to end up as ATCs but changed my mind! I still like the way they turned out using different coloured dye ink cubes by Stampin' Up! and I'll use them for something else.

 

A few tips that have helped me brayer;

1. Get yourself a Speedball brayer and a Splogemat.
2. Be prepared, with a stash of scrap paper.
3. Apply dye ink directly to the Splogemat and ink up the brayer from that.
4. When inking up from the Splogemat, roll the brayer in one direction rather than backwards and forwards on the mat. 
5. Remove any excess ink onto a piece of scrap paper.
6. If you need to stop what you are doing, turn the brayer over and rest on the bar.
7. Clear your work space of any little scaps of paper, glitter etc. that could stick to the brayer.
8. Place a piece of scrap paper behind your work.
9. Gently spin the roller over the edge of your work starting on the scrap paper and work your way onto the piece.  Don't press on with any pressure.
10. Build up the colour gradually.
11. Experiment with different card stock and find the right card for you.

Black White Red - Fun with ATCs

This is a single ATC I put together for the Fun with ATCs blog.  Rather than an actual ATC swap you just post pictures of your ATC via your blog.

The theme this time is Black, White, Red.  These colours always say 'Oriental' to me and one of the first stamps I ever bought (Judikins at Stamp Addicts) is a lovely image of a Japanese lady, which I never get tired of using in different projects and I thought it would be perfect for this.

A limited colour palette here and a simple card layout, so I didn't use too many bits and pieces; red dye ink, black pigment ink, embossing ink, along with some clear embossing powder, red water colour paint (from Inktense blocks by Derwent), a red fine liner pen and just three stamps.

The main watercoloured image was cut out and teamed up with a background of cherry blossom (Claritystamps), highlighted with red pen.  The card was also lightly coloured with red ink around the edges using foam.

As an embellishment, a symbol meaning beauty (stamp from Muji) was stamped and clear embossed, cut out, then coloured with red dye ink.  The clear embossing acts as a resist.

The main image and embellishment were fixed to the card with dimensional glue.

One, Two, Three.

A workshop with Claritystamp left me thoroughly inspired.  Here's what I did next..........

I started off with my new stamp 'Tall Trees' and ended up with three very different pieces.

One.....
I've had a Gelli-plate nearly a year now and have a colourful collection of prints pulled from it.

Prints used for paper piecing

I love mixing the prints with inks and stamping and the larger areas in the image of the Tall Trees stamp is perfect for paper piecing and decoupage.  In archival ink, the image was stamped a number of times, once on white stamping card to use as a base image, once on a green print, once on a blue print and once on a black print which had been back filled in the white areas with grey ink using foam.

Some of the different elements of the stamp; sky, trunks and ground were cut out and stuck down with a wet glue.  The canopy was cut out and positioned with dimensional glue.  The final piece was mounted onto another print.

Two....
On Clarity card the Tall Trees stamp was stamped with black dye ink.  Once dry I used the Texture Stamps 'dots' to make short work of some pointillism - stamping more than one dot of a time, with a selection of lovely coloured dye ink.

Brown, green, grey and blue inks

Texture Stamps - I used the dots only on this occasion

Where necessary I used the Tall Trees masks and Post-its to prevent colouring the wrong area.

Stamping the background with the trees masked

I really like the effect and how the final piece came out.

Three....
When I first saw the Tall Trees stamp it made me think of 20's and 30's pottery designs, so my final piece is inspired by the colours of Clarice Cliff.

Using fine line felt nibbed pens, the open areas of the stamp were filled with lined zentangle.  A really easy technique which is basically doodling.

Baby ATC

When I saw the theme for the swap this month I immediately wanted to do something that was a little bit different. 

The theme was 'Baby', but there are no pastels here!

I thought it would be appropriate to recognise the birth of our new Prince, but not make it too serious and predictable (hopefully).

The backgrounds were stamped up in black on white with a number of different images (music, script, blots and spots, 'boy' and a Great Britain seal) to give the impression of newsprint.

A strip of black paper was ripped for the corner of the ATC and random stampings from a number of different alphabet sets (black on white) were cut into little squares and mounted on the black strip of paper with wet glue.

The prams were made by stamping union flag images by Inkylicious (Union Jack 2 part) and dots from Fields of Sky stamp (Stamp Addicts) in random red and blue colours on white card and punching out circles, then cutting out a quarter.  Pram wheels were made by stamping in red with a button stamp and punched with a small circle punch. The prams were trimmed with ribbon, twine or lace which was glued or taped into position.

Baby George was an old stamp I've had for years (from Lakeland), he was stamped on cream card in black and a little pink chalk was rubbed onto his cheeks.  The dummy was highlighted with golden colour marker pen and gold foil.

The crowns were from Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Ornates set and are coloured with Distress markers and highlighed with gold Stickles glitter glue and a paste gem.

All the parts for the main image of the pram, baby and crown were stuck together from the back with some supporting pieces of card and wet glue, then mounted with foam pads.

I enjoyed making these and I hope the ladies who get the swaps are pleased.