Artful Defined ATC Swap

I made three ATCs for the Red Lead Paperworks Art Sister ATC Swap.  The Swap is due May 15 and is located in the Red Lead Art Sisters Yahoo Group.

*****Artful Defined ATC Art Swap*****
Let’s make some ATC’s that tell our stories.
Are you an art girl…artist…a dreamer, journaler or a little bit of them all? Define what you love and make some artful defined artsy ATC’s!


Red Lead products need to be used although you can supplement with other brands--they stock these as well.  You also must include $5.00 to have the swapped out ATCs sent back to you.  Love that I don't have to buy an envelope in order to address it to myself and include postage!  And the sisters always include wonderful freebies from their store. It is a real treat for me to shop at their store in St. Louis, Missouri, which is open on Saturdays. If you can't get to the brick and mortar store, you can always shop on-line which is what I do even though I'm only across the river.  Here's hoping the postal employee can put on his/her waders and get this to the other side of the Missouri River by the 15th.

If you want to see these larger and in better detail, please just click on the photo. 

So here are the Red Lead Materials:

Cropped image of woman holding flowers from the February 2013 freebie collage sheet from the Red Lead Sisters, Sharon and Chris.  These usually are posted on their Face Book page.  Note:  I converted to black and white and increased the pixels to 600 prior to printing out the image on matte photo paper.

Fussy cut images from the freebies that came with my orders.  Now, I ask you, what is an art sister swap without an image of the actual art sisters? 

6x6 inch manila tag paper.  Just like the tags only square (and obviously no hole or string).  Perfect for creating my ATC background.  Purchased at Red Lead a long time ago and don't see it in the on-line catalog.

See the Artist Within, exclusive Red Lead rubber stamp.  I used only the sentiment portion of the stamp.

Postal exclusive Red Lead rubber stamp set -- must have been a limited edition as I can't find it now in the on-line catalog.

Red Lead Art Stencil 6x6 Template:  Inspire


And here are the Other Materials I used:

Ranger Distress Ink pads in Picked Raspberry, Mowed Lawn, and Salty Sea.  These were used for the swipe and spritz (with water) distress technique on the tags.

Ranger Dylusions Ink Spray in Sweetened Orange and Fresh Lime.  These were used to add interest to the backgrounds.

Sequin scrap used for a stencil

Making Memories metallic staples.  These were used on the pocket ATC.  Chris and Sharon recently had a tutorial in the in their on-line newsletter about making a pocket ATC.  I thought I'd give it a try.

Ranger Distress Paint in Seedless Preserves for a bit of contrast and different texture.

Black sharpie to outline the ATC and sentiment.

Ranger Distress Marker in Vintage Photo to outline the images.

Archival Black Ink for stamping.

I'm new to stenciling and worked quite a while with different mediums to try to get the stencil words not too blurry.  A couple of them are done with Ranger Black Soot Distress Stain.  One is done with a Ranger Distress Marker in black soot followed by outlining with a Sakura Gel pen in black.  I liked that the raised gel ink added definition.

Time to pop these in the mail and move on to the next project. I think it will be a rough go for me when there no longer is Saturday postal service!