Stamping and Coloring

A while back I was making swatches for some watercolors Valerie bought me, and I used a piece of watercolor paper to clean off my brush in between colors. When I was done, I looked over at the paper and thought, wow, that would make great backgrounds for a set of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards).

I stamped windmills on two of them. The other one was done with Distress Inks.

For this one I did the puppin in the pocket separately and popped it up with pop dots. I made the puppy to look like an on-line friend's dog and sent it on its way. I like how differently it looks just by cutting the background with the brush strokes going vertically.

Valerie keeps spoiling me with new dies she doesn't want to wrap for Christmas! Aren't these flowers so pretty?! I cut them with handmade paper I've held on for far too long. It even has metallic highlights.

Dawn bought me this sweet stamp I've wanting for a long time. Isn't she fabulous?! I colored her with Faber-Castell markers and then went over each color with colored pencils to kind of fill in the strokes. I need to practice coloring with my markers more. Actually, I need to practice more of everything.

Arting

My daughter Dawn and I did our first Artist Trading Card (ATC) collaboration!

Dawn created the background with the amazing technique we learned from Tim Holt's Creative Chemistry Class-3. She brought them to me and said, "Now that I've done this I don't know what to put on them. You're good at that, here."

I was nervous at first because I didn't want to ruin her beautiful art. It took me a bit to come up with ideas, but after rifling through my die cuts and stamps, I came up with these. She kept the bird, I kept the other one. Maybe next time we do it, I'll do the background and she can put the other side of her creative brain to work.

I've done several Instagram ATC swaps and having so much fun! This is my latest, which will be going out to jolly old England. I borrowed Dawn's mermaid die-cut and used some scratch watercolor paper on which I was trying different art crayons. I feel like there's something missing, but at this point, I'm afraid I'll mess it up. Plus I have to decorate an envelope in which to mail it, so I'm calling it done. 

I belong to a Facebook paper doll crafting group that consists mostly of making Julie Nutting paper dolls. I joined their Christmas ATC swap and will find out who my partner is at the end of this week. This is the ATC I made using one of the smaller Christmas sets by Prima. I wrote JOY on the Christmas ornament confetti, but it was a challenge to photograph.

I'm working on a few other things, mainly my ornaments for our annual ornament swap, which is this Saturday! I've never cut it so close, but I didn't like any of the ideas I was considering. I finished the prototype last night around 1:00 a.m. I'm still not feeling it like I usually do, but maybe it'll grow on me. Happy holidays have begun!