Artist Trading Cards. When you hear the term, what do you think of? It may be one of many things, and one of those might be completely drawing a black. It's a beautiful creation, the ATC, and it is becoming more and more popular as an art form in itself as time goes on. Simply put, an ATC, or artist trading card, is a small embellished piece of cardstock that measures 2.5 "x 3.5". They are smaller than a lot of art journals or scrapbookers are used to, but they usually get used to it after a while. I know that I did not want to trade my first few cards, because they looked so horrible, but I got better, and learned how to incorporate my regular techniques into my artwork. There are actually two different methods used in making ATCs. The single way, or the serendipity method. I will talk a little bit about these two methods in this post. I normally work the singular method, but both ways work.
The first method that I'm going to be talking about is the singular method. This personally is my favorite, but it can take a little while to get used to this technique. Basically, you take a piece of cardstock and cut it to the right size (2.5 "x 3.5"). Then you just get busy and decorate it in the same ways you normally would do your art. You can use paint, clay, papers, pens, beads, stencils, inks and stamps; anything that you would normally use. You can get some really simple designs or some really complex ones onto that card. Normally you would use cardstock, but you could also use metal, clay, cardboard or thick chipboard. Or anything else you can think of. You could probably even use plastic if you could find some way to cut it. Anything you can use as a base that is not TOO thick. You want it to be able to fit in a plastic sleeve (the kind they usually use for baseball cards).
The second way you can make these cards is to find a large piece of paper; it could be cardstock, a page from an oversized book, a textbook page, or maybe a sheet of newspaper. Then you just go to town. Stencil, stamp, doodle, and paint. Do whatever you feel like doing to the sheet. Then you can simply cut it up into the right size. After this is done, sometimes people will add 3D embellishments, and sometimes they'll simply add a title or some words. After that's done, they're ready to trade !! I recommend trying both methods and seeing what actually works for you. It may be completely different than my method, or maybe you'll come up with your own! Either way, just create, experiment, and have fun !!
