Making Books From Collected ATCs

Where does the time go?!

It is almost December, and I have so many different posts swirling around in my head. It's clearly time to sit down and share a project I've had in mind to tell you about for a couple of months now!

Remember this gem of a book? It gave me ideas for my booklace projects, and other bookbinding inspiration.

When author and bookbinder Erin Zamrzla suggested a Little League Score Book, I thought, "Well, I sure don't have any baseball trading cards to make that." But then it occurred to me that Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) I have received from my creative friends would make perfect book covers for this project.

There is artwork from Karen Ann Young, Steph Dodson (where did you go, Steph? I can't find you online!), Ronica Jones, and Rhonda H represented in these books.

The ATCs provide the front and back covers, while card stock is used to create the spine. A fairly simple ledger binder (i.e., pamphlet stitch) is used to sew the text weight paper together inside. 

I really like the fact that I've found a way to use the art that has been shared with me, rather than just tucking it away to look at when I think to pull out the ATCs I have stored away.  These notebooks are an ideal way to enjoy the art during everyday moments of life.

There is also one ATC that was created as a demonstration piece at the Invoke Arts table at a rubber stamp show I attended many years ago, as well.

I absolutely love how these little books turned out, and the 3-1/2 inch by 2-1/2 inch size makes a reasonable size for ideas, notes, and jottings.

For more bookbinding inspiration, please visit my Book and Journal Making board on Pinterest; there are enough ideas there to keep me busy for the rest of my days!

Introducing Kids to ATC Art

Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) are a fun way to get kids creating and sharing art with a wide audience, and Rose Chislom has created an online community via Facebook to encourage children to get involved in trading ATCs around the country and around the world.

Rose's Facebook community, called All About the Kids Art ATC, is a closed group, but easy to join if you have children in your life who might have fun creating, sharing, and receiving art.  She has multiple themes running at a time in order to appeal to lots of different kids.  When I got involved just a couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate to encounter a My Little Pony theme, which happens to be my girls' VERY favorite cartoon, and the subject of most all of their drawing and art-making these days.

Other themes include Superheroes, particular letters of the alphabet, Mine Craft, Star Wars, fairies, postage stamps, and family--truly something for everyone!

The only "rule" for ATCs is the size requirement:  2-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches.  They can be drawn, painted, colored, photographs, fabric, whatever.  Children of all ages participate.

Most of the events appear to be 3 for 3:  create and send in three ATCs, and you will receive three ATCs (from all different child artists) in return.  Rose collects all of the contributions, and organizes them to send back out to participants, which ensures that your child will receive something equivalent to what they have sent in.  (Have you ever participated in those chain letter things with your children, making sure that you follow all of the directions to a T, for "sticker club" and the like, only to have your child receive NOTHING in return?  Happily, this exchange is set up to avoid that kind of disappointment.)

If your child creates ATCs that are not part of the established swaps, you can post their art on the Facebook page, and see if anyone wants to do an individual trade.

For those of you who would like your child to participate, you can find All About the Kids Art ATC on Facebook and address any questions to Rose.  I think it is such a fun project that she has created, and a great way to give your kids a wider audience for their art!

** All of the My Little Pony art in this post was created

by my own children, for their first ATC swap.**

Mail Love & Learning

I just did a fun swap of ATCs and paper goodies with Steph of Steph D's Art & Stuff (formerly Paper Cuts and Lemonade).  Steph's work is always bright, colorful, and graphically interesting, and I was so happy with the additions she provided for my own collage stash:

We communicated ahead of time to give each other a sense of our styles, likes, and dislikes, and Steph did such a great job including the kinds of things I love, while being sure to include some great new colorful items for my supply.  (In searching for things for Steph, I decided that I am much in need of more COLOR in my collection!)

Looking over Steph's package to me, I thought of all the things I learned in just our one exchange:

1.  It is helpful to share your style ahead of time with your swap partner, but it's equally important to include the things YOU love, too, so your partner isn't just getting more of the same as she already has.

2. I tend to send my swap items in a standard envelope, and then "dress it up" with duct tape, papers, and stamps.  I thought it was very clever and fun of Steph to "think outside the envelope," and use a Trader Joe's grocery bag as her mailer:

I used smooth stones from a recent trip to the beach to cover up our postal details!

3.  I love the way Steph used a regular blue name tag label, and made it more decorative and "air mail" style with a red pen.  I've already used this technique for those of you who will be receiving my bookmarklets at the end of the week!

4.  And a final great lesson I learned from Steph's package is to GO BOLD!  I  love Steph's bold and confident handwriting here, and it suits the bright and graphic nature of the papers, labels, and tags she included in her package.

Here are the two ATCs Steph included for our swap:

Fun timing, as I just started reading the book Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano.

Here are the two ATCs I sent in my package to Steph:

To see the stash of papers and goodies I sent along with them, check out Steph's Tumblr post. 

I have a trip to make to the PO with my bookmarklets, but I'll have to wait for this "snowpocolypse" to pass us by!

ATC and Paper Goodies Swap

My latest swap with Sue in the UK involved two Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and a selection of paper goodies.  (You can see my first swap with Sue in this earlier post.)  We established a loose theme of houses/doors/windows for our ATCs.  Here are the two I sent to Sue:

And here are the two ATCs I received in return:

 I love the filmstrip embellishment above, which shows the pictures she's adhered behind it.

And I really enjoy the picture of the homes climbing up the mountainside on this card.  Many thanks to Sue for these beautiful cards!

When I saw the selection of paper goodies she sent along with her ATCs, I decided to challenge myself to use them on some postcards....ONLY the pieces she sent, with no additions from my own stash.  Here are the cards I created (each one is 4 inches by 6 inches), in the order of their creation:

And even with all of these collages, I still have plenty of scraps left over to play with:

Many thanks to Sue for getting me closer to my goal of catching up with my mail art!

Art Retreat Postal ATCs

When I go to the CREATE Mixed Media Art Retreat next weekend, I am going to want to share contact information with all of the new artists and friends that I meet along the way.  So I have been creating a set of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) to exchange.

I am back to working in the tiny little square area that remains on my work table, as materials from other projects encroach on my space!

The cards began with a background made from delivery documents from 1893 and 1905.  Would you dare to cut them up into ATCs?  I did!

Then I added postage stamps and lots of decorative tape.  Finally, they got a smattering of postal-themed rubber stamps.

My contact information will be on the back, and I have a big stack ready to travel with me to Somerset, New Jersey, at the end of this next week!

Coming Soon: Studio 791 on Etsy!

A major part of my goal for 2013 includes not procrastinating any longer on projects that have been awhile in the making. 

Stacks and stacks of books can only mean one thing--collage packs in the making!

For over a year, I have been seriously considering opening a shop on Etsy, but made little progress toward that goal as I pursued the "craft show circuit" last year.  I have determined that 2013 will be the year that Studio 791 makes it to Etsy, and I have set April 6, 2013--my 40th birthday!--as my target Grand Opening date. 

Bins and stacks and piles characterize my work space...but then again, that's the way it always is!

That means that aside from Valentine heart-making, my art space has been dominated by shop-opening preparations:  inventory to assess, packaging and labeling to improve, shipping and handling to be considered.  I've read so many interviews in which artists explain that once they "go pro," they have to spend more time on the business end of things and give up some of the actual art-making that brought them into business in the first place.  I can understand what they are talking about, and I'm not even responding to orders yet!

You can bet that everything I will offer in my shop will be things that I would want to buy for myself!

The whole process is completely exciting, though.  I have wanted to open a shop on Etsy for over a year now, and I am making solid and definite progress toward that goal.  I am definitely the sort that needs to give myself a deadline to make it happen, and it seems appropriate to align my shop's debut with my own milestone birthday. 

I will keep you posted on my progress, and you are all--of course!--invited to the Grand Opening on April 6!

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Nothing keeps me more inspired than finding art and friendship in my mailbox each day.  Here are some of the latest goodies I have been enjoying in 2013:

You can see the adorable postcard with the reproduction vintage Valentine in the foreground from Mary.  She has been an amazingly generous mail art buddy this year, and we're just over one month in!

And that amazing envelope in the background comes from Sherry in Illinois.  Take a closer look:

I really don't know why my photo is posting sideways.  Go ahead and crane your neck for a better view!

Sherry also sent traditional Valentines for my girls!  How thoughtful is that?!

Terrie continued our postcard exchange with this great experiment in creating layered backgrounds:

Janet and I did a bookmark swap, and she slipped in an ATC I loved from a recent post on her blog:

This is a lo-oo-oong bookmark with gorgeous colors and images.

It was so hard to capture its awesomeness in a photo!



Janet's ATC--words to live by!

Every day is Valentine's Day when you share Mail Art Love!

See You in September!

For the first time since I started blogging in earnest in January 2011, I am going to take a blog break for the rest of this month.  But I will be back in September, so please come back to visit me then!  I will have lots to share with you when I return.

I leave you with images of the most recent Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) I have created:

For this little house, I used acrylic painted papers in blue and tan, with a scrap of text paper for the roof, a scrap of Cavallini & Co. bird sticker for the central image, a little punched heart, and phrases from a magazine to say, "your intuitive sense of what's best for you."  I think the off-center arrangement works a bit better in person than in the photo somehow.

For this ATC, I used an image from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, which was illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen.  Boy, I love the illustrations in that book!  I have used them for a number of different projects, including my recent collage pages.  Here, I just added a little balloon from book text, glitter pen on the stars, gold marker around the edges, and a clip of text saying "my epiphany."  I really like this little one.

The little boy in the picture above was flying over some rooftops, so I used the houses from that same illustration for another ATC.  Text page roofs, direct-to-paper inking for the background, gold pen edging, and stars punched from gold paper.

This ATC is actually not brand new, but I brought it out of hiding. The jacket belonged to Amelia Earhart, hence the "LOST" stamped on the inked background, which also has the rubber stamped image of a compass rose.

If you are interested in doing any swaps with me, check out the "Swaps" tab at the top of the blog.  I enjoy different kinds of trades, and will be up for some new ones when September rolls around.

See you next month!