Washi Tape-lovin' Artist Trading Cards

Hello all!  Happy Wednesday!  Today I am sharing three artist trading cards, all using washi tape. (Because if you hadn't read my last post, I LOOOOOOOVE washi tape!)

I also have to apologize - these photos are taken with a phone, and some of the pictures I take disappear somehow.  I KNOW I've taken them because I see the little thumb image, but when I go to search for it later, the image is gone.  Right now, I don't have a more professional set-up, but I am hoping that by Christmas, I will have the ability to make videos, and hopefully better photos.

Anyhow, these three are part of a swap on ATCsforall.com, where players make ATCs based on a person's profile.  (See my previous post for the first two cards I made for the same swap.)  Person 1 liked bare trees and an night scene with a moon, Person 2 liked flowers and whimsy, and Person 3 (the person hosting the swap) likes mixed media with a lot of texture.

So - back to the ATCs!  I'm sure you can find them in the second and third ATC, but can you see the washi tape in the first one?  Keep reading to find it!  (I'm just excited because it looks better than I expected.)

I started these two the way I do most of my ATCs...with a bookpage!  Actually, that's not quite true - the text you see on the flower card is tissue paper (the kind you put in a gift bag) with text.
I recently discovered my tissue paper stash, so I HAD to use it.  I lightly gessoed over them to make the text fade a bit, but I just used a light wash, as I still wanted the text to show through.  I then stamped the tree and flower over it.

Tree ATC: I had decided to make the tree a night scene, based on the person's profile, but she also particularly liked moon-scenes.  To make the crescent moon, I grabbed a Prima circle stencil and traced a half circle.  I moved it slightly below the original mark, and traced again.  Voila!  A crescent moon!  To make a gentle night sky, I watered down fluid acrylics in Payne's Grey and Colbalt Blue Hue.

Flower ATC: I lost the photos of the flower in progress, but for that card, I mixed Lindy's Stamp Gang Magical powders with a bit of Mod Podge and painted it onto the flower, leaves and stem. The Mod Podge helps seal the colors, as they are very water-reactive.  When they were dry, I painted the background with Bombay ink in turquoise.

Flower ATC: While the ink was drying, I pulled out my washi tapes - you can't tell from the photo, but I used a watercolor-leaf pattern, a watercolor-leaf-with-stripes, and two different black and white patterns.  One of my favorite things to do is to edge everything (the washi tape, in this case) with my Stabilo Marks-all pencil, so I did that. I think it helps to bring out the washi tape when you line it with something.  I also stamped the word "Bliss" and the little butterfly. It looked unfinished still, so I used a border stamp to make the circles around the edges of the card and colored them in with a white gel pen.  Now it was done!

Tree ATC:  I colored the moon with my Caran D'ache Neocolors (water-soluble crayons) and a waterbrush., and then added stars using gesso and a pearlescent liquid acrylic. I then drew a 'hill' for the tree to sit on, but then I realized that wait...every other card I made had washi tape.  I need to add washi tape to this card too!  Yet I also didn't want to ruin the serene scene by adding a bunch of random stuff, so I rummaged through my washi stash and found a watercolor-background washi that was in the same color scheme I had used!  I bought it from Amazon, and I believe it's made by MolShine, which makes Japanese washi/masking tape. Anyhow, I laid it over the card and tore it along the line I had drawn.  Luckily this tape was easy to tear and it magically tore right where I needed it to tear.  So washi tape-as-a-landscape...I will definitely be hosting a creative washi swap once my current one closes out!  I edged the washi-hill, moon and borders with the stabile marks-all to make everything stand out more.  It still needed something...a quote, perhaps?  Yes!  Since I am currently hosting an Illustrated Literature: Fiction swap on ATCsforall.com, I had just the right quote on hand...  I have a cheesy vampire romance book that I use for quotes and background book text, and I felt the following sentence to be perfect for this card: "The first few stars winked to life in the darkening sky."  So I tore it out and glued it to the card.  Beautiful!

The butterfly host-card was another one where I lost a lot of my pictures.  For this card, I spritzed water and Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays in a couple colors onto watercolor paper.  I stamped the butterfly from a Finnabair stampset onto the card as a place holder. I laid around six different washi tape in the middle of the card - they were black and white patterned and tapes with a red pattern. I went over them with the Stabilo Marks-all, because why not?  Haha.  The butterflies in the corners of the card were used with a Finnabair butterfly stencil and light modeling paste.  When the modeling paste was dry, I went over it with a couple of layers of gesso.  Because the modeling paste is a "wet" medium, it reactivated and absorbed the color from the sprays.

In the meantime, I stamped the butterfly onto a scrap mixed media paper and colored it with a couple of greens from Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays and Magical powder. I then fussy cut it and set it aside.  I cut a generous length of thread in a black and variegated green, and glued them down with a bit of soft gel medium. I also glued the butterfly on top of the thread using the same soft gel medium.  I added a border at the top and bottom using a stamp, and viola, this card is now done!

And that's it for today!  I hope you enjoyed the walk through.  Thanks for stopping by - until next time, have a great week!