DragonFly ATC Swap

On this cold Sunday I worked on the Dragonfly swap for my arttechniquesATCs yahoo group. Remember the possible backgrounds from an earlier post? :

I wanted to capture that shimmery musical sound they make while flying with paper, paint and glue! No easy task! I decided to do a gel medium transfer from a transparency. First I flipped my scan of the music score "A Night In Spring" my friend Diane sent me. Printed it out on an Apollo transparency. Layed a "buttered toast" layer of Golden's soft gloss gel medium on the receiving area of the card and on the transparency. After A LOT of trial and error I concluded that the amount of gel to create a good transfer is the amount of butter a girl NOT watching her weight would put on her toast. Not thick, but not sparse either. Anyhoo here is a pic:
There is still some ink left on the transparency. I decided the cards need something more. What does a spring night need? Why stars, of course. Raided my stash and found some white and silver star brads. Dyed them with alcohol ink:
Stars need sparkle, of course, so out came the Stickles:
Good pic of the transfer, too. So the swap is 4/4 and I made 6 just in case. Here are the best 4 that will go to the swap:

Here are the 2 that are left. I'm keeping the one with the torn paper for myself and trading the other on Flickr.
You may have noticed that these backgrounds are the same as my "Hope for Insight" and "No Second Spring" ATC's. I love making backgrounds. Besides twisted brokn hearted repartee, creating backgrounds is my favorite part of the ATC process. I took a large piece of watercolor paper, gesso'd it, added layers of acrylics, tissues, sprays, cheesecloth and gel medium. I sometimes spend a whole day making backgrounds in all different colors. Then when I get an idea for a witty ATC, I am ready! Now I think I'll make little envelopes for them before sending them to the hostess. Or not, as time allows! Next is the Arabian Nights swap.....stay tuned.....

xoSusan