Art In, Art Out

This morning I mailed my four ATC's (artist trading cards) for the Sherlock Holmes swap, and when I came home I had these little ones waiting for me in my mailbox! It's fun getting art in the mail! I've been curious to see which cards I would end up with. I'm very happy with what I was sent. I enlarged them a little so you could see more of the detail.

I had never created an ATC or received one before this last swap, so I wasn't sure I was even doing mine correctly. All I knew was they had to be 2 /12" x 3 1/2" and that was about it. The rest is up to you how you want to embellish your "canvas." Looking these over, it looks like one person used watercolor paper as their background, one used heavy card stock, one person used two layers of card stock (which is what I did) and one used a playing card! How inventive is that?! So now I have my first ATCs. It makes me anxious to receive the next round.

I know there are ATC swaps online in Yahoo groups. I haven't personally checked them out, but I will now. Once you make a few of these you really get into a groove and it's addicting. Always sign the back of your card when you send it off and date it (which I forgot to do), too. ATCs are never sold, only traded. Other than that, there are no rules and they are fun. I may save up a few rounds of mine and then mount them on an altered canvas to hang in my studio.

Tomorrow I will post the remaining two Sherlock Holmes ATCs that I created. I think they were my favorite ones. I see that my little computer gremlins are back. As I was typing that last sentence the computer just turned itself off. That must be my cue to go. More to come tomorrow...