Mixed Media ATC's

This summer I have been quite the slacker on this blog. My apologies! I have been busy with camping at our seasonal site, Educational/Sports Camps for the boys, registering for going back to college in one week! Yikes, is it really that close? {Insert panicked smiley here}

 I have taken some time for just me to get crafty here and there with my hectic schedule. My craft stuff is slowly invading the kitchen area again from the basement.  I know you have heard it before, but I am addicted to making ATC (Artistic Trading Cards). I created these a few months ago for a "Mixed Media" themed swap over on The Stamp Shack forum. What is mixed media you ask? Mixed Media is simply defined as any work of art that uses more than one medium. What is a medium? A medium is a material used by an artist or designer to create art. Mediums could include acrylic paint, rubber stamping with ink, watercolor, paper piecing, the use of stickers, etc;  The possibilities can literally go on and on.

In the photos below, I used these wonderful little tubes of color with the consistency of lipstick called Gelatos. These are simply awesome to color with. You can use them in a variety of ways, here I just used a palette and colored like a crayon on the surface with a few shades of blue and then dipped my paint brush in water to get to the consistency I liked and painted between the stamped images of the clouds on the library folder. I really liked how they turned out, I stepped out of the box for once and was very pleased with the results. I used some Gesso first to prime the cards to hold some watercolor style painting.  I let that dry for several hours then began creating my little scene on this 2.5 x 3.5 little masterpiece. I use some 3-D Stickers from Martha Stewart, some sticker phrases, die cut of a sun and I even hand drew some doodles with a fine liner pen around edges to give it a little more pizazz. I then adhered it to the embossed cardstock base. I made 9 of these, one for which I kept to myself and sent the rest to the swap hostess to be divided up among the other artist participants. I think these are my favorite so far, I love what my mini canvases looked like! As you can tell, many artistic mediums were used!