Textured ATCs

Whilst shopping I came across some acrylic mist spritz sprays in a box and decided to have a play, making some ATCs for a group mixed media swap.

I started off with some sturdy card. A few days before I was looking at a shoe box ready to recycle but liked the vinyl feel to the shoe box so decided to have a chopping up session before recycling what was left.  I intend to use the other pieces I kept for another project.

I cut out a few pieces of text from the newspaper. I could have used any piece of newspaper really but at this point, I didn't actually have a plan as to what I was making and whether I wanted the print to show through the gesso I was going to use.

I used a little white gesso on the base of one of the pieces of cardboard and roughly stuck a piece of scrunched up newspaper, keeping in the creases as much as possible when I stuck it down.  I then gave it a light coat of gesso on top.

I gave the cards a little blast with my heat gun and then decided to leave them dry overnight to stop me fiddling with them whilst they were tacky.

Next, I used a page from an unwanted paperback book looking for short phrases I could use. I intended to use these on my ATCs once the background was spritzed.

These are my sprays -  The Crea Box Acrylic sprays came in a box of 4 (blue, green, red, yellow).  I decided not to use the blue on this occasion.

I gave the cards a gentle mist and really liked the effect, especially as they dried really quickly.

Now they looked like mini canvases.

Using some leftover decopatch glue, I adhered my phrases to the cards, giving them a light coat on top to seal them to the cards.

I thought the Butterfly Blots from Imagine Design Create would fit just perfectly onto the corners of my cards.  I stamped them onto a little piece of patterned tissue (which came out of the same shoe box I had earlier cut up) using jet black stazon ink (which is a permanent solvent pad). I used the decopatch glue to adhere them to the cards.

I also used a few of the tiny people silhouettes on the tissue paper, again giving them a very light coat of the decopatch glue to seal them to the card.

I then added some Treasure Gold metallic gilding wax in rose quartz. A tiny bit goes a long way. I passed my finger over all the raised parts of the cards as well as edging them in the gilding wax also.

They just needed to be framed onto some black card to finish them off.

Happy Crafting