ATC mark-making stencil from Toughprint paper

Fun! The artists group I am part of does ATC swaps and I have been looking thru my mark-making stencils and stamps, looking to one to use. I have a bunch of stamps I make where the elements are…arranged I guess, in what is meant to be a “random” layout. I will often get a bit heavy-handed when stenciling and as my mind wanders I end up stenciling the whole area. So I created some using simple images that I like, but arranged them so I can’t over-do it.

As I mentioned yesterday, I just did my design, printed it on the Toughprint paper, then cut it. It did amazing except the tiny little dots in the one design. It got some but missed out more.

I solved that by punching out the dots with my Cropadile!

I grabbed a bunch of papers from my desk and cut them into ATC sized bits, just to test out the designs.

I really like them all. They are quite small scale, and all on one sheet, which is nice. I like the scattered nature of the motifs, and they stencil nicely. A big win!

I have a few other designs I might play around with. I am trying to think of some more unique marks. I am also on the hunt for the exact little man silhouette I used on this piece. I found lots but not this exact guy. Driving me MAD, it is. I found one of the little ladies cute from a transparency, and the file where she came from but the stocky dude is not there.

{sigh}

ATCs, leather scraps and mailings

Been working all morning on packaging up my WOYWW 13th anniversary ATC swaps. I think it worked out pretty well. Now to get to the PO! Yesterday was spent all day in Salisbury, as Darling Daughter had an orthotics appointment for a new leg brace fitting. Fun. Back in eight weeks to see if it has done more harm than good. Hopefully not, but as it is a slightly new design we will see.

I did have a couple of people who were willing to swap digital versions of the ATCs, which is good, although they are really only slightly less work than making a “real one.

The colour is not as spot on as I would like but it isn’t so off that I don’t feel they are a true representation of the actual paper&card ones. I did add to the printed versions. The edges were smudged with the same Distress Oxide ink and the gold sequin dots were added – they look. basically like black dots when scanned so, yeah, they really needed that.

Then it was just making endless (or so more like 10) envelopes and adding a little message. All ready to pop in the post.

The one oddball is for a fairly new WOYWW participant and I decided to add in some bits from a recent score. The local glove factory is shutting down. I popped in yesterday because The Hubster saw a post on Facebook about it – they were selling off all manner of things, from massive reels of lovely coloured velcro and elastic to spools of thread and leather scraps. I got a bag full.

True scraps, not huge pieces, but some lovely colours. I had quite a long chat with the owner, as it was just me in there, late in the day. He explained most of the glove makers were getting to retirement age and sadly there were no young people interested in learning the skills to replace them. The gloves are gorgeous and so many varieties, and some of the tools were almost sculptural in their design – like the love forms and the irons. Amazing. I may pop back Monday and grab a few more things, as the owner said they will remain open and selling off the stock and the tools of the trade until they close the doors.

I’m off to see what the internet has to offer in the way of crafts with leather scraps….then hopefully to the post office, later today or tomorrow.

This is what happens when you take a break….

Yesterday, after posting, I popped over to Julia’s to see what was up with WOYWW. Imagine my surprise to see that we are perparing for the ATC swap to mark the 13th anniversary!! blimey. Later in the day dear Helen (h) commented on my blog words to that effect so I was double warned and really felt I had to figure it out. I missed very few anniversaries, probably only just after my SINAM diagnosis (YAY! Finally an acronym that seems to be slightly universal – Statin-Induced Necrotizing Autoimmune Myositis takes a long time to type LOL!)

Cue panic. I had to come up with an idea, then decide on a design, then make the things and I had a very limited amount of time to do so – as I mentioned this week is a bit full. I dragged out a bunch of stuff and found the quote – the PERFECT quote – and got to it.

The little stamps at the right? Man I love those guys so much. They are quite tiny but super useful. I bought two sets from Tiger ages ago, pre-Pandemic, and I wish I had bought more (I think they were maybe £3?) as, typically, WOYWW has three W’s and each set only has one of each consonant. Bah!

I went thru a number of possible designs, tested out a few different stamp sets for the bit above

but in the end I finally managed to settle on a design I quite like. I wish I had time to make enough for every WOYWW person but I probably don’t. I’m hoping for 8 with basically the same design and I might be able to squeak out a couple more that will be unique. Maybe. Anyway, we’ll see.

With any luck I will manage to settle back in to a weekday blogging routine but I am finding it difficult to focus my mind on crafting. We are still working to get back into a routine but it will be short-lived. Darling Daughter ends her time in education at the end of the summer term and it is going to be a challenge. I have a follow-up with Rheumatology in June as well and might be getting another round of IVIG – or something else, who knows? My meds are changing (a little concerned about that) and everything seems like it will be in flux for a bit. Anyway, WOYWW tomorrow and the big 13! I wonder if there will be a crop any year soon? Wouldn’t THAT be lovely?

😀

Missed it by a day! An ATC swap.

Not that long ago Susan and I (WOYWW mate) decided to do a blind ATC swap. We each sent off four ATCs and waited for them to cross the world. Susan is in Australia, me in England. Today I got a package. Late in the day, after I had already had my WOYWW post up for our weekly desk hopping party. But I had to share them. Lovely, each and every one!

Even the mailer she included was so clever and cute!

Folded to create four little pockets for each ATC. The ATCs are beautiful – and all so different.

First a lovely shot of them all:

Honestly I cannot pick a favourite. OK well maybe. That pink girl is stunning and so quirky!

I was so excited to see the notation on the back, listing her as from LeighSB designs. Never heard of her, but of course I had to have a bit of a Google… and found her FaceBook page as well as an etsy shop, so woohoo. Not to slight the other cards:

All of them are beautifully made and just so much fun. I am happy to have them in my collection – I do hope she is happy to have mine in hers!

It’s been AGES since I made an ATC. I’ll add that to my list, right after crochet, and my knitting machine, and my art journal, and…and…and…..

WOYWW 665 – a little sad this week

It won’t be such a happy WOYWW this week, knowing Julia lost her mother last week. My heart goes out to her. No matter how “expected” a loss might be, it is always still a shock. And it certainly makes me think of my own parents and feel, quite keenly, the vast distance between us. Were it not for Covid I expect we would be making regular trips across the pond. In fact, my in-laws are coming for a visit in the next month or two, which, sadly, my parents are in no fit state to do. It makes me quite sad that the last few years have been lost to this blasted virus. Luckily we went home for a family wedding just before things really got bad, but still…

First, my computer desktop. No photo, just some thoughts. As I mentioned previously, the Hubster has been working on tidying up our music collection. I keep coming across songs I have not really thought of in years. and one of them in particular really resonates with these times of Covid. It’s called The Microorganisim, and my recollection is that it was about the Aids epidemic. It was written by an early 80s folk-rock group called Boiled In Lead. Wikipedia describes them like so: Their style, sometimes called “rock ‘n’ reel,” is heavily influenced by Celtic music, folk, and punk rock, and has drawn them praise as one of the few American bands of the 1980s and 1990s to expand on Fairport Convention’s rocked-up take on traditional folk.

My favourite line (and one that certainly applies to Covid, especially in the early days of the pandemic) has always been:

Rattle your sword before you strike
And never kiss anyone you like

Next, my main desk. The beginnings of another AJ page with a drawn quote. This page with a schmear of colour fits the quote perfectly.

^{Some days you just have to create your own sunshine}

I also have a shot of my side desk. I have been trying to sort and tidy my ATC collection, both those that have been traded and those that I have available. You can see those in the drop-down menu at the top. If you fancy a trade, do let me know!

You can just see off to the side the If You HAD To… choices for the week. Oops. added that close-up now…

Yikes. Well I already have an incurable disease, but I do NOT fancy becoming a garden gnome. While it might be quite hard to know everyone’s future, and know it might not be wonderful, it doesn’t say anything about not sharing the info if it could alter that future to make it better, so yeah, I’ll go with that.

All in all a pretty uninspiring desk this week. Some days are just like that….

Neurographic ATCs?

I thought it has been a while since I made ATCs so I thought Is there a way to make neurographic ATCs? Well, I won’t know till I try, right? I began with a sheet that was 10.5 inches x 7.5 inches (ie three 3.5 inch blocks x three 2.5 inch blocks) and drew the block edges in thick lines, then began drawing my neuro lines

I added the circles and rounded the corners, first with the thicker Sharpie

and then added a few more lines and rounded, first with my Fudeball and then a finer Uniball pen

Then I did the colouring in with a variety of water-based ink markers, some worked better than others (and the Stampin’ up ones were the worst)

I did the multi-colour one first, didn’t like it, so from them on I limited myself to only a few colours, as you can see. Then I cut them up into the ATC sized cards

From here, I have a few ideas of what I want to try, in addition to the dotting. Not sure if they will end up as actual ATCs or just a ring of inspiration cards or…something else! Stay tuned.

One thing I did realize is that I am keen to try a whole piece using only the finer line pens. And I have another idea that I need to have a go with, that may (or may not) work out. I seem to be in full experimental mode lately. Yay, ME!

LOL!

ATC book finished

Not really much to crow about as it was basically drying time that held me up form being able to share the final item yesterday. But with the holidays looming and time short, I am just about keeping my head above water. I still have the DIY calendars in Spanish to sort out and I and woefully behind on my WOYWW visits. That is my top priority this morning! But here are a couple of quick shots for you:

It’s quite minimalist really, just the great collage collective paper and some letters. But I quite like it and it was great for storing all the trades:

and that leaves the other one I made to store the coins that I keep from my sets!

All in all that found folder from 2003 really worked out well!

Moral of the story? Hoarding is not always a bad thing….. LOL!

Because I never throw things away….

One of my knitting mates kindly gifted me with a folder for housing ATC cards – I am kinda running out of loose sleeves so very timely. At the same time, while having a bit of a tidy up during the Christmas decorating, I found another little notes book. It was part of one of those monthly magazines, where you get a really good set of gifts to begin with for a bit of money, then they aim to get you to spend a ton on things like collectible cards. This one was a tie in, if I recall, to a Jackie Chan animated series and was dated 2003! It is pretty compact and I like the little flaps that keep things inside.

I wanted to re-purpose it to hold ATC coins and I wanted to do it fairly simply. Those vinyl covered notebooks are hard to decorate, for me. The last one, the large format one I am using for cards, I stripped off the vinyl and painted the inside cardboard, but that proved to be problematic! Anyway for this one I decided to make use of a sheet from the Collage Collective papers.

I trimmed it to fit the flat front, leaving the black border intact and stuck it using matte medium. I brushed another layer of matte medium over the top to seal it.

Then back to the “never throwing stuff away” and I riffled thru my stash of scrapbooking letters. Problem is most of these sets came with a single letter, maybe if lucky a few extra vowels. These, I literally had all but the final C to spell ATC Coins.

I had a solution but the size on those wasn’t quite right. It worked with these two sets combined tho’. I can only assume all the Cs were consumed by many many spellings of JACKSON LOL!

I had the small-set Cs but no space. So where I am now is waiting for it all to dry, weighted down with stamping blocks. I’ll finish it up in the AM and share, but I am also deep in the weeds trying to sort out my PDFs for one of my children’s books. It’s sending me round the bend…

I am trying to find decent (preferably either free or at least a one-time fee rather than a monthly fee) flip book software because I would love to share a flip-thru of a book at some point. Not having a lot of luck with that.

I also got a request for Spanish language Sun-Mon DIY calendars for a long-time follower who uses them year after year. I should be able to sort them out for next week (I hope) and with luck then I will have all the rest of the time between now and Boxing day scheduled so we can have some very much needed Family down time.

Stay safe and well this holiday season.

Well, that was a surprise!

Sorry about the snafu and super late post yesterday! I had created a post, and thought I saved it and scheduled it, but them The Hubster came home from skating and I asked him to do a back-up on my machine (he keeps the back-up disk in the car so if the house burns down the disk is safe) and I guess I messed up the date and time of the post. It might have published but been placed in early November rather than December. Oh well. It’s in the right place now.

So today I am able to share some progress on the cover:

I want to add the word STORAGE under ATC and maybe edge the whole thing with the gold, but it needs a little bit longer to dry.

The big news is…Christmas cards! Going back to a tried and true design, printed the embellished.

Some Happy Christmas and some Merry, depending on which side of the pond they go. I did a post AGES ago on how to make these. Maybe it will be of interest? And there is a set of kraft-background printables as well as the white background here. You can see these (made from the kraft version) are cute too.

I have to get a wriggle on because stuff mailed to the USA is taking a while and I want to make sure they arrive before Xmas. Most will go in packaged with the gifts, but the odd one might go on it’s own.

WOYWW tomorrow!

Far too busy to blog…..

I have been in an absolute whirlwind of activity for the last 4 days. Now Thanksgiving is over, that Big-C holiday is looming and there is a lot to do to prep for it. The biggest problem is my sewing room. There is a massive, heavy table, that had all of my sewing stuff and my machine on it, that blocks the cabinet where the Christmas tree and all the decorations are. I had to more it all around to access the festive goodies. And believe me, before the turkey was cold and the last bite of pumpkin pie eaten, Darling Daughter was all “So when will we put up the tree?” Sorry to say that simple task created a cascade or shuffling and sorting and rearranging. The Hubster and I toted an entire bookcase of books up a level, I moved two more bookcases into my craft room, moving out one piece of furniture of limited use, then of course had to populate those shelves with things from elsewhere. Then there was a massive effort in the kitchen to better organize and relocate my cookbooks, and make room for the now ex-dvd shelf to become a pantry. We have no idea what food we may have squirreled away from buying multiples of something we use a lot of when we find it on sale, or when we stock up on something during a rare Costco run. This is the only explanation for eight bottles of green pest and four bottles of red! OK, so they are small bottles, and good into 2022, but still….

Boring right? especially with no photos. You will see some on WOYWW day as I photo my desk, but I fear it won’t look startlingly different, even though there is an additional 6foot bookcase that will be on view.

I do have one thing I will share – I have been keeping my ATCs to trade in clear envelopes, but I am finding that unmanageable. I have a stash of baseball card sleeves but what I don’t have, and what is rare as hen’s teeth in the UK, is three (THREE – not two, not four, THREE) ring binders. I managed to find one very ugly one that was falling apart, and I am in the middle of decorating the cover of it so I can use that for my ready-to-trade ATCs, cards and coins both.

I have to stick this cardboard piece to the vinyl lining and am going to see how very strong and thinck double-sided tape works. Unclear at this point what else I will do. but hopefully by tomorrow I will feel ready to take it on.

I have all of my ready-for-trade items inside already. I have been very bad about sharing them on the trade sites I usually use. I might just plan on waiting till after the holidays at this point. Happy mail in the new year will be something to look forward to, and all the mail delays (and potential theft if someone mistakes an ATC for a gift card!) will then be avoided. Wanna see how many I have?

Coins first

Now the horizontal ones:

Nothing that I have not shared, I don’t think, but any photos ill make this post a lot less boring, for sure.

As soon as I sort out the cover, a quick share and then it has to be Christmas cards! Oh dear!