Vintage Image Group atc swap

Polished stone, collage, and distress ink background,
Altered Pages image, vintage trim, "gold" stars.

polished stone atc

Have you ever tried the polished stone technique?
Wow, you can get some gorgeous backgrounds
with that method--the paper really has the illusion
of depth. I learned from Rhonda, as in, at her house.
You could also see how HERE.

The atc (well, it's more calling card size) is for
the quote challenge at Theme Thursday, and the flower
is from my dear husband, who showed up tonight with a dozen,
just because he's as sweet as he is handsome!

Theme Thursday season challenge

For the Theme Thursday season challenge, combined
with a swap, this represents spring. The background
is a watercolor wash, overlaid with stamped words,
and the main image/text is stamped in StazOn.

The jewel in the corner is sparkly and appealing in
person, but not so much via the intraweb . . .

handmade bookmarks for swap

Here are two bookmarks made for a swap:





Both use the serendipity mixed media collage background
style made in the tutorial shown HERE.

They also have a nice coating of Mod Podge on them,
to make them more durable.

This seemed like a good swap for me to join. I'm NOT a
page-corner-turner-downer (GASP!!!), but I am a random,
whatever-is-handy-grab-it bookmark kind of person. A
couple of "real" bookmarks will be nice to have--I'm
kind of excited to see what shows up in the mail!
:)

watercolor resist background tutorial for atcs, inchies, twinchies, handmade postcards . . .

Here are a few simple and fun background technique
tutorials for making atcs, inchies, twinchies, tags,
handmade postcards--whatever it is you like to make!

The bonus is, they're not only simple, these backgrounds
are made with inexpensive art supplies that everyone
(probably) already has lying about . . .

Watercolor Resist Technique


First, randomly mark all over a heavy weight piece of
cardstock with crayons. (Yes, you can use lighter weight
paper, but heavier is better, watercolor paper is best.)



Next, get your watercolors nice and juicy with water, and then


brush paint all over paper. Allow it to dry,


and you have some wonderful background paper!

watercolor wash background tutorial for atcs, inchies, twinchies, etc . . .

Watercolor Wash backgrounds

First, get a heavy weight piece of cardstock nice and
wet. You can use lighter weight paper, but heavier
weight is better, and watercolor paper is best.

(Don't over rub and pill up your paper.)


Get your paints nice and juicy, and brush spots of
color on your paper--it will bleed and blur out.


Allow it to dry, and you have a lovely piece of
background paper! Won't that make some pretty atcs?

serendipity mixed media collage background tutorial for atcs, inchies, twinchies, etc . . .

Serendipity style mixed media collage background tutorial


First, dig into your stash of collage papers or recycling
bin, get a nice weight piece of paper for the base, and
grab your favorite adhesive.


Now, randomly glue paper/collage scraps all over the
base paper.


ALL over it! At this point, you could just cut this up
and use it for backgrounds as it is, but I like to add
acrylic paint . . .


. . . by dripping it all over the paper and


smearing it all over with my hands, making sure the paint
is thin enough to see through.

You could stop here again, OR add some more paint prints--
see the next tutorial on printing with found objects!

bubble wrap printing/printing with found objects tutorial

Use a piece of scrap cardboard to smear a thin layer of
acrylic across a piece of waxed paper, or paper plate, or
foam produce tray--you get the idea.


Press a piece of bubble wrap, bubble side down, into
the paint . . .


. . .peel it up . . .


. . .and press it onto your base paper.


Want more print marks? Use found objects like kitchen
utensils--here I use a wine cork. No kidding, I bought a huge
zip-lock bag of wine corks at a garage sale for 50 cents--
how weird is that? But they make great circle prints!

a few added flourishes and some background samples

I like to add crayon to my backgrounds--


Here is a postcard size piece,



and here are some atc size backgrounds cut from the
backgrounds made in the preceding tutorials.

If you're visiting for the swap, I hope these
hints were helpful!
:)

a couple of swap atcs

Vintage image atc


"Feet" themed atc