ATC's - Garden Statues

Here are the finished Artist Trading Cards for the California Art Girls swap. This month's theme is "Garden Statues". I wrote a bit about the process in a prior post. I sent them off today to the swap hostess.

But i did want to share how they came out. I mentioned making them hinge somehow but rejected that plan when i could not decide what to put underneath the flap. You know, like something of "significance" to make it interesting. So instead i used pop dots to raise up the statues to give the cards a 3-D effect. I found garden related phrases in a book and cut them out and glued them on. I then randomly smeared rub'n'buff metallic paints to give a verdigris finish to the stone. I love how the shadows fall on the background.
I finished off the backs with a garden image torn from a magazine ad and a butterfly sticker. People wonder if you "have" to do the backs. You don't. But hey - why not put something there besides your name, so that it will be just as much fun to turn it over and look at the other side. I created a simple label on the computer with the swap name and the number of the set, ie 1 of 6, 2 of 6, etc. I have seen other ATC traders do that and thought it looked so professional, like limited edition prints! I added a touch of colour to the labels with cat's eye stamps. Nothing i hate more than when WHITE computer paper stands out on a collage. PLEASE always make it blend in to the background - so it doesn't scream BRAND NEW WHITE COMPUTER PAPER, especially on a vintage sepia tone collage.
Ok - rant over. I shouldn't tell you, but in my early altered book swapping days, i often added colour to the prior person's work - when i thought their elements looked too incongruous. It takes about 5 seconds to dab a bit of an ink pad direct to paper, or to swirl on some glaze. Or splash on some of Aileen's super fab Color Mist sprays.