More Cute Toile Items...

50's Swing Dress in black & white toile from Blue Velvet Vintage.com.





Vintage style black & white toile dress. Unique-vintage.com


Imagine wearing either of these dresses with the boots in my previous post!

ATCs...a great (new) pastime.

I absolutely love to make ATCs. What are ATCs you ask? Artist Tading Cards.

Artist Trading Cards (or ATCs) are miniature works of art about the same size as modern baseball cards, or 2 ½ X 3 ½ inches (6cm X 9cm), small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets. The ATC movement developed out of the mail art movement and has its origins in Switzerland. Cards are produced in various media, including dry media (pencils, pens, markers, etc), wet media (watercolor, acrylic paints, etc), paper media (in the form of collage, papercuts, found objects, etc). The cards are usually traded or exchanged rather than sold. You always need to label the back of your card. Include information such as Title, Artist's Name, Date Created, Address (these things are swapped through the mail, someone might want to send you a "thank you" for your amazing ATC), and any other contact info you would like to share.




I have mentioned this subject before, even to artistic people, and they roll their eyes. "What will they think of next?," they say. Well, I don't know but I love 'em.
For me, ATCs help me become more inspired. Working on a small canvas gives me great ideas. I have a very diverse collection--mine, of course, being my favorites. I have a 3-ring binder filled with pages and pages of wonderful ATCs. I love to look through them and get inspired. You can find binder pages to hold your cards at Walmart (in the trading card section--usually near the front of the store) or at a comic book store. (For the locals: Vintage Stock in Springfield) Here, you can also find protective sleeves to insert your cards into prior to swapping.



I have joined ATC trading clubs on Yahoo Groups but I have a history of being disappointed with them. I do not like to blindly swap. Too often I have made beautiful cards (in my opinion) and recieved something that was, well, less than lovely (in my opinion). I prefer to peruse artist's cards and request a swap. Many artists have their cards on flicker and it it easy to view and contact these artists.



Another site I am fond of is Swap-Bot. There's not a lot of pressure here and there are a plethora of different items to swap. So much fun, go check it out.






In the meantime, grab a stack of old playing cards and start using them as your own little canvases for your own ATC masterpieces. Hey, maybe we can swap sometime!