The End of the ATC Adventure

Well, I've come to the end of my year long adventure of creating an Artist Trading Card a Day for the entire year of 2008. An Artist Trading Card is a small work of art always measuring 2.5 by 3.5 inches and can be created with just about any type of medium. I just posted the last 5 ATCs ahead of time on Flickr. As I look back at all 365 ATCs, I reminisced about what was happening in my life on the day that I made specific ATCs.

The first ATC I made on January 1, 2008

The last ATC......December 31, 2008

This year wasn't all that hot for me, I had a lot of stress which caused some health problems however creating my ATC and gave me something to focus on and brought me through some tough times. Art is like that, it's therapeutic it's cathartic and it's healing. I've often said about creating art....."when I'm sad I create art and it makes me feel happy and when I'm happy and create art it makes me feel even better". Art has always been there for me whether it's using a stick to draw a picture in the sand or creating a mixed media project with 6 different meduims. There is a quote from aritst Hans Hoffman, which to me sums it all up, "A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world." I look back at the 365 ATCs and I can tell you what was happening in my world when I was creating each and every one of them.

Ok, enough serious stuff! Now you ask what does it take to create 365 ATCs? Here are some statistics:
3193.75 square inches of cardstock for the backing, which is 266.145 square feet of cardstock

4 medium sized jars of Liquitex Gel Medium

3 paint brushes to apply the glue

1 computer printer cartridge

$85 (estimated) in stamps to mail the ATCs all over the world

2 nail brushes (to get the dried gel meduim off my fingers)

Interesting people I've met, traded with and even became friends with...... priceless!

If you'd like to see all 365 Artist Trading Cards click here! I still have many available and if you see one you like, email me with the date and title of it and I'll send it to you if it hasn't been mailed off already. It was great fun and I'm happy I stuck to it. Hmmmmm, I'm wondering what I should do for 2009?!?!? Any suggestions?

Lemonade Summer.......

Yesterday was one of those hot perfect summer days. I spent the afternoon hanging out at my friend's house by the pool with 2 other friends. It was a perfect lemonade day!I'm very fortunate to have the summers off since I work in the schools. Every summer around June 4th or 5th I get to relieve that feeling of having the endless possiblities of summer stretching out before me like a mile long country road fading into a far away pinpoint.



I think the kids in this ATC had this picture taken at the beginning of the summer right after school was out and they knew that if they stood like statues for another 15 seconds until the picture was taken, they would be home free to enjoy a lemonade summer!

Lemonade Summer

Summer came folding in upon us on warm merangue clouds,

It spoke of promises of hazy yellow days,

Barefoot hours on the porch swing reading of far away places in time,

And fireflies gently captured in Mason jars lanterns.

It was a lemonade summer

Lemonade Recipe

1 cup sugar (can reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 cup water (for the simple syrup)
1 cup lemon juice
3 to 4 cups cold water (to dilute)
Method
1 Make simple syrup by heating the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved completely.
2 While the sugar is dissolving, use a juicer to extract the juice from 4 to 6 lemons, enough for one cup of juice.
3 Add the juice and the sugar water to a pitcher. Add 3 to 4 cups of cold water, more or less to the desired strength. Refrigerate 30 to 40 minutes. If the lemonade is a little sweet for your taste, add a little more straight lemon juice to it.
Serve with ice, sliced lemons.
Serves 6.

The Cat is Out of the Bag!

Sometimes I like to get silly with the ATCs!

meow!

Military Gals, Dogs and Mermaids.......

I thought of the saying "tough times never last but tough people do" when I came across the vintage picture of these two gals. They look like the kind of girls that are tough, smart, funny and would be fun to go out for Happy Hour with!

Lately the news is full of stories about people who have had their houses foreclosed and as a result they had to take their beloved pets to the pound or some of them just left them at the house to starve (that's despicable)! I ran across this photo and thought I had to use it in an ATC. This little girl is dedicated to her dog and her dog is surely dedicated to her! He looks like a cute, scruffy little biscuit-eater (mutt)!

And finally, it's starting to look like fishing season around here! My husband is getting geared up for crappie fishing in the area. Inspired by all this talk of fish I made this ATC. All of these ATCs are available for trade or even if you see one you like and don't have any ATCs to trade, let me know and I'll send it to you.

The Inner Artist Is Calling...........

These ATCs were inspired by the lottery. Yes, on an impulse I played the Powerball which is worth 20 million dollars. I can count on one hand how many times I've bought a lottery ticket but lately I've been hoping for a huge windfall of the green stuff so I could do what I want to do for the rest of my life and not have to answer to anybody, while still being able to pay my bills! I know, it's everybodies dream! Oh, I'd better go check the numbers!!!!

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" - Eleanor Roosevelt
"When I grow up, I want to be an artist"! That's what I said from the time I was 3 years old until 11th grade when my mother informed me that I had 4 years to get a degree in college in something in which I could GET A JOB in when I got out. An artist was not going to be one of those things evidently! LOL! Oh well, I still have that "inner artist" trying to get out and probably always will even though I have a Master's Degree in something other than art!

If Mona Lisa became a witch......

Hmmmmm, now that's a strange concept (if Mona Lisa became a witch)! But that's exactly what I did turning a stamp of the Mona Lisa into a witch complete with the green face, black glittery hair and a black hat with a vintage winking pumpkin. The head, arms and legs fold into the size of the ATC (3.5 by 2.5 inches). The ATC is spectacular as it has whole lot of collage elements going on! I particularly like the antiqued signs which read, "the fragmentariness of life makes coherence suspect", "obscurity is its own reward" and "spooky". There is also a mini collage of the Eiffel Tower with the word Paris stamped over it, half of a vintage style moon, tiny vintage photo of a baby wearing a witch hat, a bee stamp, a "bonjour" stamp, a mini portrait of Mona Lisa with a hand gun and a skull. Each time you look at it you will find something new!

It's available on Ebay starting today!

I painted this chair this weekend. It's so stinkin' heavy for a little chair! It came from an old elementary school. I think the reason there were no hyperactive kids in the 1950s was because of these kind of chairs...........they were so heavy that it wore the kids out pushing them in and out from the desk and they didn't have any energy left to be hyper!