Artists' Trading Card

My lovely teamies at Everybody Art Challenge want us to make an ATC.  I have never made one before and I have to confess to being very outside my comfort zone.  It took me ages to come up with an idea for my 3.5 x 2.5 inch card but I knew I wanted to upcycle some old snippets of abandoned watercolour card I had in my stash.  

A couple of years ago I went to an "art class" on a cruise ship.  I have italicised the phrase "art class" because frankly, the "teacher", whilst pleasant and capable of producing some nice pieces herself, had absolutely no idea about teaching and came up with some (in my view) completely unsuitable projects for our class who were probably aged between 30 and 85!  The first session would have been ideal for 3-10 year olds and involved drawing through a giant basic butterfly shaped stencil and painting it with watercolour paints.  I outlined more than one butterfly, and overlapped them.   We were given no idea how to prepare our paper, mix our colours, or put the paint on the page.  We actually had no instruction whatsoever and at the end of the class I had learned absolutely nothing and had a childlike flat image of parts of 3 yellow butterflies against a blueish background.  

Upon my return from the cruise, I cut the large watercolour paper into 4 pieces and put them in my stash.  It was another one of these 4 pieces I used today for the base, back, and frame of my ATC.  And wow!  I'm thrilled with how it worked out for my project.   I used an Aall & Create Die for the abstract honeycomb and cut my inked and stamped apple and honey wand from the same piece of discarded watercolour cardstock. 

This is a small stamp and die set from Papertrey Ink which I have never used before and it came with the "sweet & fruitful" stamp which I heat embossed in copper on vellum.  As a finishing touch I used Glossy Accents on the uncut half of the apple and for the honey on the wand.  I felt really stretched making this project but I absolutely love how it turned out.  I even used a coverplate to emboss another piece of "butterfly watercolour" and adhered it to the back of my ATC.   

Do check out the wonderful inspiration of my teamies and share some love with the Design Team by leaving comments on their blogs and then why not come and play along with us

I am entering my card into the following challenges:

Creative Inspirations - Sept - Always Anything Goes

Krafty Chicks #732 - Stamps

Polkadoodles #36 - Always Anything Goes

We Love to Create Mixed Media #8 Anything Mixed Media Goes

Simon Says Stamp (Mon) & Simon Says Stamp (Wed) - "Stamp it" for Stamptember!

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers #253 A is for Autumn.  I thought my ripe apple and honey combined with my colours were a good match for Autumn