Pick Your Technique ATC's with A Muse Studio

I procrastinate way too much like always. I join ATC Swaps on a message board called, The Stamp Shack. These cards are due to the hostess by this Saturday, August 11.  I created this tonight after trying another technique that flopped miserably because I did not have any glossy cardstock on hand. Note to self... get glossy cardstock next time at the craft store! Usually I can get by and used glossy photo paper but I was out of glossy photo paper! 

What are ATC's you ask? An artist trading card (or ATC for short) is a tiny, original piece of art created with the intention of swapping or trading it with another artist, not selling it. The one rule an artist trading card must adhere to is the size. An ATC must be 2.5x3.5 inches or 64x89 mm. (Why? That's the size of the original collectible sports trading cards.)

Instead I did "my own version" of the Baby Wipe Technique (I used Spray Ink). I first used Gesso on the cardstock base to stiffen it up a bit to use the baby wipe/spray technique that I knew would be very wet so I knew to take some precautions beforehand. I just used an old business card, I curved it and dipped it into the gesso and wiped it across the cardbase to give the entire base a thin coating.

Put the baby wipes on a flat surface, make sure you have a heavy piece of cardboard or something underneath so it won't damage your table, etc. I had layered a few baby wipes on top of each other. I held the wipes and then sprayed the ink in various spots, its ok to layer the inks, you can get a better effect that way.  Then I put the cardstock base onto the wipe and just dabbed it all around until I got the desired effect.

Below is an Instagram photo I took.

 **Note** these baby wipes I was using were a bit more on the dry side than normal ones. I think the lid was left open for a bit, so I was trying to still use them for something... waste not, yadda yadda, yadda... ;)

Set those aside for a while and let them dry for about 10-15 minutes. While they dried, I stamped and cut the other pieces for my ATC Card. I used Cherry Pigment Ink to stamp the Hot Air Balloon Stamp onto the Sugar Cardstock. Let those dry, then I used a make-up sponge and dabbed it into the Pigment Sky Ink and then dabbed the cut out piece of stamped image and made a sky looking light blue background. I then adhered it to the Yellow colored Venetian Cardstock named Lido. I cut the Venetian Cardstock to 2x3 in size and centered it on the baby wipe cardstock base.

This is the finished product. I made 10 of these 2.5 x 3.5 ATC's and will be mailing 8 of them to the hostess, we are always supposed to make 9 and send only 8 to the hostess, we keep our own card so the rest can be swapped with the other designers.  I will add my designed card to the batch that I will proudly display in the 9 pocket page Baseball Card Sleeves. These fit nicely into a 3 ring album and I have several just dedicated to the many, many ATC swaps I've participated in over the years. Each ATC Card Swap has a proposed theme as a guideline for creating the cards. 

I hope to create a technique binder of ATCs. I want to showcase all the different stamping techniques in ATC form. There are so many out there, Splitcoast Stampers is my favorite place for resources and tutorials.

Edited to Add: My inspiration for these ATC's were my most recent Facebook Timeline Cover Photo I found online at IWANTCOVERS.COM

I used all A Muse Studio products.... Click on the highlighted link to purchase these items in my web store. If you have any questions, please post a comment below!

Supplies Used:
Venetian Patterned Lido
Stamps- Love Conquers All
Pigment Cherry Inkpad
Pigment Sky Inkpad
Sugar Cardstock
Splash Inks- Blackberry
Splash Inks- Orange

Thanks for looking!