Thursday, August 7, 2008

Joyful Heart ATCs

This month's swap theme is "Black and White" (to balance out the "Colors" swap from two months ago... ;-)

When I joined the group I vowed to draw at least a little on each card -- and then didn't follow through with that. Drawing is something you have to practice to do well, DUH! I'm very out of practice. (I guess I did draw a few wavy lines on the Celebrate Life cards.) This month I had lots of ideas for the black and white theme, but settled on drawing. I have a fear of drawing! And I used to love to draw.

So I got some black ATC stock (hey there's half the color combo right there ;-). I punched the edges with a fancy triple corner punch my DH found at Goodwill recently. Then while looking for a small circle punch I found a spongey flower stamp cube, so I stamped one of them onto the center of the card with white chalk ink, which dries fairly quickly.

Next, I got some white and silver scrapbooking paper and punched little hearts out of it. 18 of them to be exact. Well, 20 in case I flubbed a couple. I just used glue dots to attach them to the card, centered over the flower "rays." Then I put little silver rhinestone heart stickers in the centers of the paper hearts. Sinfully easy so far...

To warm up, I doodled on a couple of cards to see which white marker worked the best. I prefer the strong white of correcting pens, but they're uncomfortable to hold and draw smoothly with. Especially when you're making bunches of ATC's at once! I'm left-handed so rolling ball pens (such as the gel pen I settled on) don't always work well. I found that if I drew very, very slowly, the ink flow was better.

Most of the time, I started with a border around the fancy edges, and by the time I was done I'd have an idea for the centers. I tried to think of various ways to "treat" the heart motif -- kind of like those improvisational comedians who take a prop and do various funny things with it.

Pretty soon I was in a kind of drawing trance. The night was finally cool, the breeze was finally blowing, the boyz were finally in bed... and I drew until 1:00 a.m.! I actually have a sore place on my thumb today! I finished 12 of the cards and hope to finish a total of 18 or so before Saturday morning.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, drawing skills are defnitely a "use it or lose it" kinda thing. LOL, I was surprised by how rusty mine have become when I decided to "whip up" a new logo!

    BTW, I really like these cards. The one in the upper right and the one in the lower left are my favorites :)

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  2. Thank you Drea. 8-) I'm ok with 'em -- and your faves are my faves actually. -M

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  3. They look great. Black and white is hard to do a lot of and still be creative. (Maybe it's just me with black and white). Eighteen is a large number to do.

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  4. Hey Miz Bird 8-)

    This is a large group most months -- so my goal is always around 18 to 20 and whatever I get done, I get done. They go fast! I kind of enjoy moving through several at once, thinking of ways to to "production" tricks and still try to come up with something somebody else might want!

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