ATC Turn About at House Mouse & Friends

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a great weekend and had a chance to get creative and make a card or two to celebrate World Card Making Day!

I am very excited about today's post as I get to play guest designer over at House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge!!!  Thank you so much to all the gals at HM&FMC for inviting me to guest design!  The challenge this fortnight is 'ATC turn about' - include an ATC on your card.  Just in case you are not familiar, ATC stands for artist's trading card and is basically just a little piece of art that measures 2.5 by 3.5 inches.

I can honestly say that I had never even considered making an ATC before - I find the name quite scary.  But that is the great thing about a challenge, so I put on my artsy hat and started playing.  Here is what I came up with:

I used Feeder Friends, which is a gigantic stamp, and masked out all of the branches and flowers so that only the mouse and birds at the feeder were left.  I coloured the image with distress inks using almost every shade of brown available along with black soot, scattered straw and wild honey.  I then used the masking technique again to stamp the background with a wood grain pattern.  I wanted to give the glass a shiny glassy look, but remembered (after bleeding it a little - oops!) that Timber brown Stazon does not hold up to anything except water.  So, I cut out a transparency film in the shape of the glass and covered it with Goosebumps spray, which has a beautiful shimmer and dries nice and shiny.  Once it was completely dry, I peeled it off of the film and pressed it down on the image.  It has just enough stick to stay put, but will peel off if you try to lift it.  This photo captures a little of that shimmer and shine.

To finish off my card, I framed the ATC with twigs.  Picking twigs was a great fun to do with my two year old - he loved it!  I printed a computer generated sentiment onto a TH banner, added some twine, a wood grain button, and some feathers.  The top corner felt empty so I grunged it up with a couple of stamps and added some pearls.

Be sure to pop on over to the House Mouse and Friends Challenge to be inspired by their talented design team.  I hope you will be able to play along and am looking forward to seeing all of your creations!

I would also like to enter my card in the following fun challenges:

Charisma Cardz Challenge - Badda Bing (bling/shiny)
Divas by Design - use some texture
Totally Gorjuss - anything goes
Anything Goes Challenge - Animals

Thanks for visiting and for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love having the chance to visit you back.

Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating today!   Have a great week!

Hugs,

Dawn