Back to Making ATCs

I have had a horrible few weeks, sick children, me sick, then my cat. Things are leveling off. I have not had time to make ATCs. Then I got so stressed out that I stayed up late a couple of nights this week in order to destress by fooling around with art.

I have a bunch of different irons in the fire.

I am trying to make up more ATCs to fill to put into one of the 'art boxes'. I needed to put in 12 or 13 of my own ATCs.

I had started a Disney themed swap and had the ATCs half done then got creative block. I finished those up today and mailed them out today to the swap hostess.

I made up four goodie bags to give to hostesses of swaps. I decided to do some ahead of time which will make it easier when I need them to just grab one. I filled a little bag with pages torn from various books such as a book in French, a dictionary page, Peter Rabbit book, little game pieces, little silk flowers, a few game cards and various other little scraps of paper which I feel I have too much of around here.

I finished 8 ATCs which used Spanish text pages on them. I somehow thought the swap was 6/5. I went to mail them out and when I referenced the information about the swap to get the mailing adddress for the host I found out it is a 10/9 swap. Yikes. I then could not find the left over Spanish text pages so that I could make more ATCs with Spanish text to get these done in time for the deadline. I spent about an hour going through lots of ephemera that have built up and are in little boxes. I still can't find them. This is very odd.

I went through my box of partially finished ATCs which I got creative block on. I finished off a bunch of those. Those were all different including some being hand painted, some rubber stamped, some Citrasolv transfers, some packing tape transfers and some collages.

I took some with mistakes and cut out portions of it. I then mounted the smaller decorated paper onto a background paper so it looks like a little framed piece---it looks great! I saved the ruined ATC from the garbage pail and made something very nice looking, hooray!

This week I started and finished a mixed-media block collage which I then cut into 12 ATCs. Unfortuanately the orignal collage was larger than my scanner, so I had to do scanning in two parts. I am not sure if I can piece it together on the computer and have it look like a one-piece thing or not. I then cut these and finished them off by doing the labels, sealing, etc.

I also wrote out the labels for the backs of all of those that I finished this week, glued the label on, put a sealer coat of Golden Acrylic Soft Gel Medium in gloss on the front and the back and left those to dry. I then scanned all of them so they are ready to swap out.

I am waiting for three more sets of Poppet ATCs to arrive for the Poppet Swap I am hosting which was due on May 1, then I will swap those out.

More ATCs are rolling in for the mixed-media block swap that I am hosting and it has been fun to have those arrive.

I love getting little goodies from people as a hostess thank you gift. I have been taking those and using the papers as inspiration for new ATCs.

One person on a chat list had three man-face rubber stamps that she didn't want. I had asked if anyone knew of a vendor that sold man-face rubber stamps as I rarely see them. She sent those to me and today I put together about half the stuff that I am going to send her in return (ephemera and little game pieces).

I received a little bag some ephemera and game pieces from a person on a chat list who said she wanted to give it away to anyone who wanted it.

Another kind soul from a chat list (S.H.) who recently moved has decided to declutter her unwanted stuff. She has sent me four boxes so far, the last two came this week. There was a full box of Somerset Studio back issues, a box of a bunch of various other magazines about paper arts. One box was of ephemera and fancy papers. One box was full of craft supplies like paint and Blo Pens and paint pens and all kinds of other products that I have no idea how to use (yet).

So that is what I have been up to. You can imagine that between the stressful events that are going on and the time I have spent making art, that I have not taken the time to blog about all of it!

After my flurry of making ATCs and sending out the swaps that I am participating in, and sending out the swap that I am hosting, I will have time to sit here at the computer and upload images of all the ATCs that I have been making. Stay tuned.