Secret Door to Fantasy: ATC 1

I finished my Secret Door ATC's! And, I even got them mailed off EARLY for a change. After missing the deadline for the Shakespeare ATC's I was very disappointed in my lack of time management, so I vowed that I would finish this set early. Here is the first ATC for the Secret Door Theme. Also different for this set of ATC's: I did NOT do them digitally. They are all made the old fashioned way with cutting, gluing, pasting, painting, etc.

I created each card with a door that opens up to a secret destination. This card depicts a fairy cottage in the woods (first photo). When you open the door (second photo) you see the fairy inside. The third photo is the back of the card. I finally remembered to sign and date my cards! I always signed them, but kept forgetting to date them. I'll post one a day so you can check them out. They didn't scan as well as I would have liked, but after resizing them in Photoshop this is the best I could do. I think they look much better in person. The actual size is 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", which is the standard size for ATC's.

I mailed these off yesterday to the person hosting the swap at Artella. They aren't due in to her until July 15, so it will be a little while before I receive mine in the mail. When I do, I will post them here.

I've also signed up for my first zine swap! I am really excited about the one that Artella is hosting. I've been itching to create my own zine, and now I get my chance. The swap is just now forming, so people are in the signing up stage right now. For those of you who don't know what a zine is, it's basically a homemade version of a magazine. You design it, write it, print it and distribute it. They can be any size, any theme, anything you want them to be! We have to mail ten zines for this swap. You can create ten copies of an original zine you create or you can create ten original zines and mail those out. I guess it depends on how creative you are!

For this swap the only "guideline" we are given is that we have to create ten zines (and we'll receive ten back), and they should be at least ten pages (front and back). The pages can be made of any material (paper, fabric, metal, etc.), can be any size, the sky is the limit! I'm mulling over some ideas right now. I'm working on a little mock up to see how it will translate onto some of the material I've chosen for my background pages. I'll post a few pages when I get going. It's a big time commitment and a lot of work, but the rewards are so cool! You get ten zines created by other artists in the mail! You actually create eleven zines, because you certainly want to keep a copy of whatever you create for your own files after working so hard on them.

That's all for today. Tomorrow I'll post another ATC and maybe some more surprises! ;) Stay tuned...