For those of you wondering what an ATC is, its simply a 2.5" x 3.5" piece of card which you use as your canvas or card. You can decorate it however you wish, you don't have to be good at drawing or painting because any of the crafting mediums can be used. The only rule is the size. And then once you have made them you can then trade with others.
I started trading on the Docrafts website but I mainly trade via http://www.atcsforall.com/ - why not take the time to have a little look, they are a really friendly bunch. I mostly do encaustic wax painting, acrylic painting or water colours but I do join in the different group trades every now and again which force me to try new things.
I have hundreds of atc's stored away in folder and thought it was a shame to have these tiny works of art closed away. So a year or so ago I started to choose my favourite atc's (very difficult) and mounted them onto card and framed them. I added a little caption underneath each one which tells me who created it, where in the world they are and when it was made.
I have three framed pictures now and they have pride of place on the walls of my craft room. My intention is to do some more to hang around the house. See what you think.....
This first one is from a swap I organised based on 'eyes' and they had to be hand drawn / painted. Because I was one short when I did this I ended up drawing one myself to balance the pictures:
The following picture I just put various 'nature' atc's together. Most have been hand drawn or painted but one of them is stamped (top middle).
The last picture is based around animals. On here are the very first two atc's I received from someone outside the UK, a talented artist from America asked for two of my atc's and I agreed to a blind swap in return (blind swaps are when the other persons makes an atc for you and sends it without you seeing it first).
I was overwhelmed when I received them because they are gorgeous. They are hand painted in acrylic - the baby elephant (top middle) and the three Siamese cats (bottom left). She painted the three cats for me because she knew I had three cats.
A couple of other things to mention, the dolphin (top right) is actually painted onto denim material and the cat (third row, third from left) is a stamped image. The pub crawl was sent to me as a surprise from another lovely lady in America after I told her I was suffering from a hangover one day.
Have a great weekend everyone x
