Finished ATCs for Swap: Watercolor Paint on Baby Wipe

Phew. Today I finished my ATCs for a swap with the technique of “watercolor paint on baby wipe”. That technique makes the background then we get to do whatever we want on top of it to finish the ATC. This technique is one that is taught in the book “Artist Trading Card Workshop” by Bernie Berlin.

I had made the backgrounds quite some time ago.

One set came out much, much brighter than I intended. The colors are bright red and a bright blue (together on one background). Some of them were more mixed to make a deep plum purple color.

Each time I sat down to make these ATCs I had creative block. Those bright colors were just killing me. They look cool, don't get me wrong, but they are a bit like tie-dye shirts rather than what I am used to working with.

As I blogged last week I’ve been very busy doing outdoors fun stuff in the late spring and this early summer. I have not had a lot of time to make art. I have been squeezing it in here and there. But in reality more of what was happening was squeezing in time to sit and have creative block. I'd plan to make the ATCs then I'd sit down and just be frozen. I'd stare at those backgrounds and my mind was absent of ideas.

The deadline for the swap is tomorrow so I just carved time out today and forced myself to do it.

I know from reading what others have said, to just “make art” and the block will lift. I literally forced myself to make some ATCs and the first ones had mistakes and failures. I started off trying rubber stamping. Even the black Staz-On ink was not making dark impressions, it was coming out light despite there being adequate ink on the stamp. I then switched to embossing with rubber stamping which does not at all work on that background, it was so odd how the embossing kind of sank into the baby wipe and disappeared.

I then switched to sifting through my papers, ephemera and found some good stuff but it was not jiving with the background colors. The second set was a jade color green, by the way. It was frustrating but I kept going.

I finally made some decent ATCs. I then seemed to find one great idea after another. I forced myself to stop when I finished the tenth ATC. I only had to make six! So it got to a flow point where I just was on a roll and so I made some extras.

In a few minutes I’ll scan them, write my name on the back then seal the envelopes to get them ready to go out in tomorrow’s mail.

Frankly I am glad the swap is finished as I was under a lot of pressure to get them finished before the deadline. I am very good about doing my swaps on time and am a stickler about it with others so of course I am holding myself to the same standard.

I have two swaps left to go, one with a June deadline and the other in the second week of July. I have not signed up for any more swaps as I want some time to relax and do summer stuff.

I’ll post the scans when I have time to reformat the scans into an up-load-able format.



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