A nearby Art Gallery is having an exhibit/contest for local artists, the theme is Day of the Dead and the medium is Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s). Here are my entries. I used a combination of collage with stamps (traditional and digital) and some copies of vintage clip art.
I used tiny clear beads over the image for the Sugar Skull
-Heather
Here’s a few Art Cards I made with a cool new bird cage stamp. In the first two I used a template and patterned paper and cut out the bodice of a dress and added it to the top of the cage so it would look like a vintage “cage” dress form. I added a bird inside the cage and a tiny wire hanger to hang it from.
This card uses a quote from William Blake and I added a blue bird and some tiny black alphabet beads.
-Heather
I love Alice in Wonderland, the books, the movie, the artwork, it’s one of my favorite inspirations. Awhile ago I got some stamps of Tenniel’s illustrations from Alice in Wonderland from a company that is sadly no longer in business so I’m glad I got them when I did. Anyway I got them out the other day and made some cool Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s) with them.
All of them are 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ on a base of cardstock and vintage children’s book pages. The images were stamped and then colored using Prisma colored pencils and a blending solution called Gamsol (you can get it from Inky Antics: http://www.inkyantics.com/acc1.htm) you use an artists blending stump to blend and soften the color pencils, I love the look and control it gives.
The first one is the White Rabbit, holding his pocket watch. I stamped some clock images on the background page and added a real watch crystal with some real watch parts inside, they move when you shake the card 🙂
The next is Alice dressed as the Queen, wearing a gold crown and holding a golden scepter, I colored them with a gold gel pen so that they are a shiny gold. I also added some red roses (already painted red by the cards) and also a gold charm of a castle.
This last one is my favorite, I love the part of the book where Alice drinks from the bottles and grows large and then tiny. Here is Alice after she’s large looking at the bottle, it’s an actual tiny glass bottle with a cork stopper filled with tiny blue beads and glitter and I tied around a tiny tag that says “Drink Me”.
I love working with beeswax but it’s a little time consuming, a little messy and a little unpredictable but it’s fun so it’s worth it:)
Here’s a little info on using beeswax. I use an old small crock pot for my beeswax, keep in mind you can’t ever use it for food (or anything else for that matter :)) ever again. Melting Pots work too but you’d have to clean it out I guess if you used it for anything else. I just leave the wax inside when I’m done, it cools and dries and I put it away and just plug it back in next time I’m ready to use it. Now here’s the time consuming part, it takes hours for the wax to melt again and I’m not a patient crafter so I hate waiting! I use a wooden spoon to help stir the wax (metal can get hot) and tweezers to dip with. I lay my items on wax paper to cool. So all you do is make your item (in this case I made a collage of a fairy in a jar and cut them out) pick it up with the tweezers and VERY quickly dip it in and out of the wax, letting any excess drip back into the pot. If you leave it too long the wax will be too thick to see your art work underneath. If that does happen you can try to melt some of it and blow it out of the way with your heat tool. You can also dip a paint brush in the melted beeswax and brush it over larger objects like canvases. Then just lay it flat to dry and cool, don’t touch it while it’s wet, it drys pretty quickly.
So, I got out my beeswax pot the other day and made some really fun ATC’s (artist trading cards). The jars are dipped, giving them the look of cloudy old glass, it’s hard to capture in a photo but they are very cool in person.
These will be listed for sale in my Etsy shop over the next few days.