January UnityATCs

Wanted to get a head start on Valentine’s Day with one of this month’s Artist Trading card sets. Oh, I had such fun creating the first set! I pulled out my Gelli block, a roller, and 3 acrylic paints I picked up discounted at a Tuesday Morning: a Satin Semi Matte Titanium White, a Daler Romney Brilliant Red and a Brea Reese Heavy Body Magenta. I cut up some inexpensive paper, pulled out 2 large Dress My Craft stencils and went to town! Basically, the process is laying down color(s), adding a stencil, either pulling it up or leaving it on the block and placing the paper on top and rubbing the paper all over to pick up the paint. I did this repeatedly ensuring I had a good interesting print on each paper with a mix of colors and patterns. Clearly each paper ended up unique, but that’s the fun of it.

Once dried I cut up the paper into ATC sized rectangles. I then black embossed the heart from Unity’s February 2019 Riduclously Amazing KOTM KIT. I white embossed the sentiment from Unity’s January 2020 Owl Adoration Uniquely Unity’s kit. I pulled out a heart die and cut out one of the hearts and backed it with paper from a Valentine paper pack. To complete the ATCs, I added tiny confetti hearts all over, Black ribbon, white string, a puffy heart and drew a black border with hearts at the corner, filled in with a glitter red pen. And these were done!

I fell back on a design I’d been thinking about for a while on the second set. I picked up a pretty cool Jane Davenport Washi set a while ago (again discounted) that contained eyes, lips and nose collages. The eyes really called to me and I knew I had to combine it with the sentiment from Unity’s 11/18  Open Your Eyes SMAK kit (love the sentiment). I picked the image from Unity’s 6/19 Enjoy Where You Are SMAK Kit for obvious reasons... could portray a visually impaired person, someone hiding behind dark glasses, vision that’s reduced by dark glasses, ... make of it what you want!

Now the challenge was what colors to use to combine with the Washi. I pulled out an Altenew paper and cut it down to ATC sized cards. I then white gessoed the the area that the face would appear in. I blended lavender and purple hued oxides onto the ATCS. I stamped and clear embossed half the woman image with a purplish blue Versaclair ink. I then added a die cut of craft paper below to bring in Kraft colors. I white embossed the sentiment on vellum, fussy cut it and attached it to ATCS Using coordinating Washi tape. I added the eyes Washi, a large gold sequin and little pearls and called this one done. Not as pretty or artsy as I would like, but I like the message.

Well, that’s it for another month. Till next time, happy crafting!