Feb 2008 ATCs

Ah, yes, it is time to post a sampling of the stash of ATCs I've made for our trade tomorrow.

The suggested theme for this month was, "Recycle" and I started working on these off and on since...hmmm...December maybe. In small spurts and bits and pieces. It started off with cutting down cardboard that comes in shirts that you buy to give them their 'shape' and using all the bits of scrap paper that sits on my oh -so- cluttered desktop. It felt good to use those pieces that I've been hanging on to for so long! I keep meaning to clean off all that debri from my workspace area just so that I will have more room to work, but alas! Unfortunately, this project didn't even put a dent in the art debris that has taken up a permanent residence on my desk. Or, so it seems permanent.

As you can see, I got carried away! This is only a fraction of what I made. Like I said, it felt GOOD to use some of those things on my desk (I'm still optimistic that I might clean my desk off someday).

I also recall hearing someone say at last month's trade that since it was close to Valentine's Day, one could also make charms to trade too. I had totally missed the other charm trades in the past, so I didn't want to miss out on this one. Hence, the blue heart at the start; that's my charm to trade. Just hope there's some to trade with!

(Pyrat) Booty Call

Yo ho! yo ho! A Pyrat's Life for me! Pyrat Booty And a Pyrat's Life And to sail the deep blue seas!

We're coming up on the second Saturday of the month, which means that it's time for me to post a sneak peek of my ATC submission for this month. The suggested theme was "Pirates". I've taken the liberty of changing the spelling to the name of the label of my favorite rum, "Pyrat". I can see why Pirates were drunk all the time as once you've had good rum you realize that it goes down easy and it goes down good! Now I'm sounding like quite the lush!

I had another concept for this month's ATC that was a 3-D design of a treasure chest full of booty. However, after several prototypes and stressing out over the time it would take just to make the 'chest', I still had the problem of finding enough 'booty' to fill said chests with! So, I scrapped that design and went to a 2-D version of Pirate booty. What you see here is 5 of the 23 I made and each one is different.

Cue the music from Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride: "Yo ho, yo ho! A Pirate's life for me..." Yo ho, yo ho!

White

Tomorrow is our trade day for the Albuquerque ATC Group. The suggested theme for December was, "White". How fun is that (ooo, shades of Rachel Ray)? I made 24 of these and no two are alike. They involve recylcing postcards from a previous mailout, white paper with different embellishments done to them (from the scrapbookers section of the store) and things that I had papercast a few years back that was waiting for just the right project to come along. Some of the castings were done from stamps, a candy mold, and some were contrived from laces and sewing notions. I painted them irridescent white. A few of them have tiny crystals glued to them. That being said, though, these were made from things that I already had in stock, in trying to keep with my resolution to use what I have. Now I have Bing Crosby's rendition of "White Christmas" floating around in my head! Aiyee!!