PICK OF THE WEEK - FLORAL ARTIST TRADING CARDS

Hi everyone,

Cheri here with my pick of the week for you.  I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of snow and cold, so I decided to pick some flowers and spray some vibrant colors around my snowy world to share with you.  I love making ATC's so I picked that as my way of showing off the flowers.  

The stamps I used on my ATC's are RI#4308-J "Lilly of the Valley", RI#904-L "Daffodils", RI#1320-M "Spring Blossoms", RI#5125-C "Dragonfly Sil, Sm" and the sentiment is from the #9900 "Hello Series", the word "love".  

Here are the supplies I used:  Heavy gesso (but you can use any gesso), six ATC cards (2.5x3.5) cut from 140# watercolor paper, water in a spray bottle, various round, found objects, inks/paints (I used ColorBursts pigment powders), paint brush and Washi tape.

I first connected my ATC cards together with Washi Tap.  This is not removed and becomes part of the background.  

I then sprayed the whole area with water and sprinkled on the pigment powder.  I choose three colors and let the pigments work with the water adding more water and powders where I thought they were needed, being careful not to add too much in order to avoid muddying the inks. 

I then sopped up the excess with a paper towel.  Such pretty results.

Keeping the panels together, I dried them completely with my heat gun (you could also let them air dry), but they have to be completely dry before starting the next step of applying Mod Podge (This should have been added to the supply photo)  

Dry completely again and using the found, round objects I dipped them in Gesso and "stamped" circles around the panel.  Once again, dry completely before moving to the next step of separating the ATCs.  I used a ruler and my craft knife, but you can use whatever you have to separate them cleanly.  There were a few pieces of Washi Tape that needed to be stuck down again and I used little bits of wet glue to do that.  But the Mod Podge should have sealed them well.  

The next step is to stamp on them.  Because I used Mod Podge to seal the cards, I needed to stamp my images with an ink like StazOn that stamps on non-porous surfaces.  If you don't use Mod Podge any dye or pigment ink may work fine.  I let the StazOn ink dry completely (I left them overnight).  

Now I have six beautiful ATC's.  See how the Washi Tape gave an additional interest to the background?  Love it!  

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my Pick of the Week!  

For this week only (Jan. 29 – Feb. 4, 2018), get 20% Off the stamps I used in this project when you use the coupon code POTW12918 at the Repeat Impressions store.