Sunday, May 1, 2011

H is for "House of Cards"

On Art-Ventures, we are slowly going through the alphabet to make an item of our choice for our swap partner as long as the technique, theme or product used begins with that month's swap letter. This month the letter is "H". There are not many "H" techniques that I know of (Heated Pearl Backgrounds, Herbs De Provenance Backgrounds, Hot Glue Stamping), so I chose to use the letter"H" for my theme and created a "House of Cards". This is a book to hold Artist Trading CARDS. I also made 5 ATCs with "H" themes: hope, hearts, homes/houses, and used a Hodgepodge of techniques.
The outer book covers were made with some papers using the Watercolor Plastic Wrap Technique with Perfect Pearls, colored the edges with a silver leafing pen. On the front, I stamped a sun image with silver Encore! ink. I adhered houses to the outer covers that were from a house die cut out of Melted Crayon on Embossed Paper technique. Placed some vintage images behind the windows. The book was bound using the Zutter Bind-it-all.
I bound 24 plastic id tags as ATC holders inside the book. The inside front cover was made using pearlescent stencil paste over a heron stencil.
The back inside cover was made by stamping sayings using silver Encore! ink over a bleached stamping background.
The back cover was made pretty much the same as the front. I couldn't help but use playing cards as the images behind the windows here. Wrote swap info around the house with a black permanent marker.
The first ATC is titled "Hope Brightens the Heart". The background is made using the Gesso Resist Technique on black glossy card stock. The heart embellishment was made using the Oozed Friendly Plastic technique. Added some very small pink rhinestones to the floral images on the girls veil and the word "hope" is cut out dark blue paper.
The next ATC is titled "Home is Where the Heart Is". The background is made using the No Sew Fabric technique. For this project, I added 3 small vintage images behind some of the windows in the houses.
The next ATC is titled "She left her heart in Paris". The background is made using the Blended Batik technique. Stamped the Eiffel Tower image with black Distress ink. Added a vintage image of a couple and a steamship, and cut out a heart shape from a Paris map image and colored the edges with brick red Distress ink.
This is an ATC I made before and just added a small bronze colored heart brad to the statue. The background is using the Emboss Resist Technique. I've titled the ATC "Holding Her in our Hearts".
This last ATC has been titled "Homegrown". The background is made using the Glue Resist Stamping Technique. I added a miniature film strip to the bottom. Colored a dictionary definition with tea stain Distress ink and attached with a staple, discolored the staple and the edge with Latte alcohol ink. Printed a vintage image onto a transparency sheet cut out in a circle shape and layered over the clock face image. Colored the images of the ATC with vintage paper Distress ink.
Hope my swap paper enjoys the House of Cards with a Hodgepodge of techniques as much as I had making it.

3 comments:

Rena Sawatski said...

Great Job as usual Carol. Good idea to use up all those backgrounds in your stash. I know your partner will love it.

Looks like you and I were a bit ahead on the timing for this as I made my item for the swap already thinking it was earlier.

Autumn Labbe-Renault said...

Ooooh, this is beyond cool. You've outdone yourself as usual.

Was looking through my G swap last night--have got to try some of those resist backgrounds.

mani said...

collections are nice, a good work is seen here.

plastic cards
pvc cards