Making Cards from Painted ATCs

I’ve now moved on to the card-making stage with my ATCs. The first step was to do the first mat layer, matching the card to each ATC.

I love the effect of matting and layering, but boy do I hate doing it! I never seem to be able to get it straight. I’ve tried the trick of peeling off only the end of each double-sided tape strip so it’s easier to get them straight, and rubbing Pritt glue along the exposed double-sided tape, and usually end up making a mess. Today I was watching the Create and Craft channel and one of the presenters said that Photo Glue was brilliant for people who find matting and layering difficult – so I tried it! It’s so repositionable and the layers glide over each other so it’s a doddle to line them up properly!

She also said that as well as the excess rubbing away completely when dry, you can also apply it and rub it, and it removes any “booboos” you’ve made to spoil your card! I thought, “I must try that!” and soon had the opportunity to do so, as I put a great inky fingerprint on one of my card pieces! It worked like a charm (probably because I did it straight away before the ink had had a chance to dry) and it also cleaned the ink off my fingertips! I’ve always said I have a love-hate relationship with this glue, but the hate element is definitely in decline!!

Before I did the first mat layer, I thought I would try distressing the ATCs with Tim Holtz Distress Inks. I had no idea if this would work; I know that gesso acts as a resist to distress inks, and as it’s acrylic-based, I thought perhaps that acrylic paint might behave in the same way, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it worked! It doesn’t show up very well in the photos, but I chose colours to match the ATCs and it gave them a whole new dimension, and ties them in very nicely with the matting and layering.

The colours I used were as shown in the following photos: Barn Door for the poppies and strawberries:

Bundled Sage for the daisies, which unfortunately doesn’t show up on this photo, and Forest Moss for the ivy:

Dusty Concord for the vine, and Tea Dye for Harvest. I was particularly pleased with the vine one, as I didn’t have any card to match the grapes, and they needed something extra to emphasise them, and this has done the trick.

The second mat layer was done on 100 gsm white paper cut to A6 and then trimmed by 1/2 inch on one short and one long side, making it 1/4 inch smaller than the final card. I distressed these sheets with the corresponding distress ink to each ATC. Here are the Barn Door ones in progress.

I did all the distressing with my Inkylicious Ink Dusters. I really don’t use anything else these days! (I suppose I have now “arrived” in that I have got crafting equipment that I now no longer use!!) I love these Ink Dusters – you can distress the edges of paper with no fear of the paper catching and creasing up, because they are so gentle, and they are so easy to control. A while back, I promised to do a video tutorial on them – I haven’t forgotten and will do one eventually!

I didn’t stick these ATCs down before photographing this, because the 2nd mat layer is waiting to be stamped. I got some new stamps this week, which are absolutely gorgeous, and I’m using some of them for this project. I got a large A4 sheet of “Fantasy Florals” from Elusive Images, and the Large Swirl by Crafty Individuals; I have used the large grasses from the former on the Harvest card, and the swirl on the Vine card so far. Here they are, virtually finished – all that still has to be done is to put a sentiment on them. These are the only ones I’ve done so far. I suddenly got too tired to continue and I needed to rest before my hubby arrived home.

I discovered another useful technique today. The cards themselves are made from white card, which really didn’t look right with the matting and layering I’d done, so I decided to distress the edges of the front to match. I am quite messy and knew I’d get ink all over the back, and probably in the middle of the cards as well, and came up with the idea of taking a piece of scrap A4 paper and folding it in half, and sandwiching it round my card so that all of it would be protected from the craft sheet. When I distressed with the Ink Duster, the mess went onto the paper, and when I moved the whole thing, any smudges went onto the bottom of the paper instead of onto the back of my card. Hope that’s clear! It really worked, and for the first time I had nice clean cards when I’d finished!

I love it that at the moment, I seem to be learning new techniques and tricks with every project I’m doing. The detail in this blog post will help me remember these ones – when I next do some distressing I’m quite likely to have forgotten.

Not sure if I’ll get the cards finished tomorrow because my hubby has just arrived home from his travels to Estonia to celebrate our nephew’s wedding, and we’ve got

some catching up to do.dbn   Ooops! Beatrice did that!! She just jumped onto my computer! Beatrice the Computer Queen.