Artist Trading Coins

I first heard about Artist Trading Coins (or circles) from the trading site ATCs For All.  A wonderful crafty artist Craftyhodges first posted about it on her YouTube channel here. She explains it, but for the purposes of this blog, it's a 2.5-inch circle that you art up, exactly like Artist Trading Cards (ATCs).

I am in the midst of creating some more, so I will eventually share some pictures of the process, but in the meantime, here's a photo of what I submitted to the trading forums.
Top Left: I stamped the bird onto Japanese text paper and colored it with Tim Holtz Distress Inks. covered paper with a layer of Mod Podge and set it aside to dry.  I then re-stamped the bird onto plain paper so I could mask the bird.  I then stamped the cherry blossoms and colored them in with Faber-Castelle brush markers. I glued it to a cardboard base to give it some thickness (formerly known as a Mt Dew box) and drew sketchy lines around the outer edge.
Top Right:  I don't like this one as much because it didn't turn out the way I hoped. I cut the circle from scrapbook paper and then blotted into Distress Inks I had spritzed with water. I stamped the bird with the Ranger Perfect Medium (a sticky kind of ink that embossing powders stick easily to) and sprinkled the Recollections embossing powder in "Snow".  This is where I went wrong. I thought it would come out white, but it didn't...it was a grey-ish color.  I ended up sketching around it with a white gel pen, and then I doodled the leafy border. I finished by stamping "Just Create" from one of the new Finnabair stamp sets that Michael's now carries. 
Bottom Left:  The base started off as scrapbook paper. I stamped the elephant onto cardstock and colored it with some Prima Marketing water-soluble oil pastels.  I don't remember who makes the stamp the elephant came from, but it was a bohemian-themed set I bought from Michaels a couple years ago. Anyhow - glued down the stripy washi tape and a bookpage, and then I mixed yellow gelatos with a light molding paste and ran it through punchinella.
Bottom Right:  I slapped Dylusions paints onto mixed media paper, added the harlequin stamps in the background, and stamed one of the adorably cute ladies from Dina Wakley's Media Girls stampset onto a bookpage and fussy cut it.  The "Worthy" is from the same stampset and was stamped onto a piece of leftover bookpage.

I don't know about y'all, but these trading coins are really going to take off!  

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