CLOUDY BACKGROUNDS

 A while ago I purchased a cloud stencil as I saw it used to make some gorgeous cards.  Even though atc's are much smaller than your normal greeting card, this technique still translates very well on the reduced size background.  I love both being able to use multiple colours as well as sticking with one colour palette in a couple of shades, and have even done one (not shown here) in just Tumbled Glass, a very soft blue in the Ranger Oxide range of ink pads.  Personally, I prefer using the Oxides to the normal distress ink pads as I think they have a great depth of colour and will blend very easily.  I used Neenah card stock as I know Oxide inks work well with this and for adding the colour, I used one of the handled make-up style brushes with lots of bristles.  Though I also tried it using my round foam blending pads as well as the little finger daubers and they worked well too!  I found it best to work on a glass mat so you can blend off the card to start with and then you are blending onto the stencil so your chosen implement will pick up colour and transfer nicely to the background.

"Artist"

"Memories

"Space bar"

"Escape"

"Voodoo dolls"

"Pinata"

(The brick wall is washi tape)

SPECIMEN ATC'S

I have seen various ways of using acetate to make clear cards and in the past have used shrink plastic as a window in an atc so it looks like stained glass when you hold it up to the light.  These atc's are along the same lines in that they are using acetate to make a specimen type of atc that when it is held up, is completely translucent, apart from the image on the acetate.  These are clear floral stickers that work particularly well as they are photographs and look very realistic.  I have still used my black backing for these atc's as I prefer my cards to have a border around them.  This just means you need to cut the same shape/size window for both the front piece and the back black piece.  The front piece starts out as a white piece of card but ends up with various colours of distress inks and distress oxide inks and some embossing on them to match the image.  I've kept these fairly minimalistic with just a little embellishment so as not to detract from the overall look.  

It was a bit of a mission to work out how to attach them in my book.  If I stuck them down on my black pages you would totally lose the effect of the acetate window, but if I stuck them down over white, they still just looked like stickers on a white backing.  So I made some little vellum library pockets and attached those with washi tape so now the little specimen cards can be pulled out to view without hindering the aesthetics of them.  

 "Specimen #1"

"Specimen #2"

(my favourite, as it's a weedy looking thing)

"Specimen #3"

"Specimen #4"

"Specimen #5"

Working out how the pockets would go.

The finished page with 2 pockets and 2 Specimen ATC's.