Artist Trading Cards or ATC are small cards that are 2 1/2″x 3 1/2″ that were originally traded among collage artists to share ideas. But nowadays everyone has jumped on the ATC band wagon and you’ll find lots of “real” artists, rubber stampers and scrapbookers trading ATC’s as well. There are lots of places, especially on-line, where you can participate in ATC swaps and get some really wonderful little jems back.
Here are a couple of ATC that I’ve made. They both combine some collage ideas and rubber stamping. The first is made with an adorable “Bee Girl” stamp from Catslife Press. I stamped her on cardstock, colored her, cut her out, mounted her on some scrapbook paper from Basic Grey, stamped some letters and added some Sparkles Glitter Glue to her wings and antennae, very simple but very cute!
This next one was more complicated. I stamped the image of the girl with wings, from Peddlers Pack, and over stamped a wonderful quote from Emily Dickinson. I colored the image with pencils, added a few rhinestones and then dipped the entire ATC in beeswax. Which is why it was a little hard to photograph:) I used a small crock pot to melt my beeswax in and used a small pair of tweezers to quickly dip the piece in and out then let it dry. I love using beeswax in my collages and this is a really fun and different way to use it. I like buying the beeswax pellets from the craft store they melt quickly and when you are done you can let it cool inside the crock pot and then just turn it on when you are ready to use it again. Just don’t ever plan on cooking food it in though!! 🙂
Now, where to keep them? I like to store my ATC’s in a 3 ring notebook with plastic baseball card sleeves inside, you can find these at comic book, baseball card shops or on-line.
If you’d like some more ATC ideas there is a fantastic book called “Artist Trading Cards: An Anthology of ATC’s” published by Somerset Studio/Stampington & Co, I highly recommend it!