Off Topic No More!

Wow, I realized I have been off topic A LOT today. I'm going to blame it on the fact that Buddy Guy (my cat, not the man, sigh, I wish....) woke me up at 2, 3 and 4 o'clock am. Digging his claws into my face, neck and hair, thinking he was building a nest or something. Jeesh! I got up at 4, I was so mad I couldn't get back to sleep. After this post, I am so napping.
Anyhoo, Below is a pic of how I decided to finish the back of my Dragonfly ATC's for the swap. I used purple embossing powder with the stamp. The best part is the paper I used. One of my customers knows I dabble in mixed media. He works at a printer, who he says throws away a lot of paper stuff. He brought me a stack of this sticky backed paper. When you peel off the back, the sticky is black. This shows through the holes in the star eyelets and looks good. Thanks, Daniel!!!

Here is my inspiration for my ArttechniquesATC's swap, Arabian Nights. My sister gave this book to my daughter when she was quite small. The illustrations are by one of my favorites, Maxfield Parrish.

I was lucky enough to see 40 of his original works at a show in Philadelphia many years ago. His colors and techniques are so inspiring.

So I took some "Mirage" playing cards (how apropos), glued on paper, enhanced the blues with gel pen and gold embossed the edges. That's all you get to see for now! I need to make 5, will probably make 8, so I'll have extras to trade on Flickr.

xoSusan

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