Artist Trading Cards - The Owl and the Snail

Hello, all!  Thank you for taking the time to stop by and check out my projects!  Today, I wanted to show some insight in how I made some of my previous artist trading cards (ATCs).  Well, one was "previous" and one was completed today.  These are the cards (and altered puzzle piece) that I will walk through.

First off, the newest project.  Since this is a new blog, I'm fairly certain that the recipient of one of the card won't see this yet, so I will go ahead and share.

As mentioned, I like to make two of whatever I make.  One for me (usually the 'experiment') and one to trade.

In the cards above, I randomly spread Dylusion paints onto the card with my fingers - the paints are so creamy, and blends so easily!  Next, I took some background alphabet and number stamps and stamped with Ranger's Archival Ink. When dry, it's permanent and won't smear if you add wet mediums to the card.  I also dabbed gel paint through a leafy stencil and stamped in white gesso with a small lid. (I had to use gesso because my white Dylusion paint had dried up.)

When dry, I stamped an owl from the Dina Wakley "Little Birds" stamp set.  My idea was to go around the stamped image with a lighter color (a white gelato), but as you can see in the left image, that didn't turn out so well. The dark pink where the owl's face was just didn't look right, so I changed tactics. I ended up stamping the owl onto a bookpage, fussy cut it, and glued it to the card. When it dried, I lightly painted over the owl in Golden fluid acrylic paints in browns and yellows. 

To finish it off, I doodled the borders, added highlights with a white gel pen and added a Tim Holtz rub-on. I will keep the one on the right, because the rub-on words stuck where they weren't supposed to; you can see I had to pen in the "I", and there's a space between the "L" and the "OUD".

For the next show-and-tell, I present to you my snail card and altered puzzle piece. 

I want to learn how to draw better, so for this card, I decided to draw and fussy-cut a snail shape. It helps that I didn't have a snail stamp! Haha!  Anyhow, after I cut it, I painted the shells with a mix of glazing medium and the Paper Artsy Infusions pigment powder.  At this point, I decided that I loved the snails so much, that instead of making myself a card, I would turn 'my' ATC into an altered puzzle piece. 

I really love how it turned out!  I will probably go back and add a rub-on word...I'm not sure yet. But as you can see, I finished the card with some Tim Holtz tissue paper, a piece of old bookpage, and a quote. I went a bit more simply with the snail puzzle piece. 

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for sticking around and reading all this - I appreciate your interest!  Feel free to leave a comment or question - I look forward to chatting with other mixed media lovers.  Have a great week, everyone!