Easter Blessings ATC's

I'm trying out a swap, making ATC's (Artistic Trading Cards). I worked really hard on these and I hope you like them. The theme for this first set is Easter. 

I do not have a cross stencil in my collections. I made my own by die cutting a Spellbinders cross out of cereal board. I added some repositionable adhesive to the center flaps of board and taped the stencil down like always. I applied Dreamweaver Stencils silver embossing paste with a palette knife in the usual way and let them dry overnight. The paste seeped out under the stencil but instead of throwing them away I went with it. 

I'm not going to preach. I want to share with you my thoughts and how it inspired me for these cards: 

I just can't imagine that doing to Jesus what those barbarians did to him was acceptable. The way they treated him is total unfathomable to me. I shake my head to think that a person could do such things to another human being. What a distressing time to live in. And here is how I applied my thoughts to my ATC's: 

I took an Exacto knife and rubbed the extra embossing paste away from the cross. This made the paper tear but not all the way through. I continued distressing with this knife around the cross on purpose for a more and more distressed look. I added distress ink (Squeezed Lemon) with an ink blender and then added Daffodil Delight ink by SU to the center. I distressed the edges with regular scissors opened and added more ink until I liked it.

Then came the ribbon. I'll make this shorter, well I will try. I could not find any purple ribbon so I inked white ribbon but it didn't dry fast enough. Suddenly I found this ribbon (I swear it wasn't there when I was looking) and I wasn't totally thrilled but whatever let's get this done. 

I had to cut slits on the top of the cross, near the center, to have a place to fed the ribbon through to loop first and then hang one on each side. Once I finished that the ribbon wouldn't lay flat. I was going to use an iron but wasn't confident what it would do to my paste. At this point I was way too far into this to mess it up on the last few steps. I flipped the card over and ironed from the back at a very low heat. It took me...way longer than I wanted it to but it was working so all is well.

The sentiment is a Stamp N Plus sentiment that I stamped with black Hero Arts ink. The background is white because anything I would have done to it would have been a waste behind the crosses and I didn't want take away from them either. Any more and the card would be too busy.

Here's a close up.

The other theme I signed up for is/was Flies in the Sky. Here are the three different ones I came up with. The cards don't have to be different. I just happened to be trying out different ideas and they turned into the cards.

I made the sky with multiple colors of distress inks and sprayed the paper with Perfect Pearls spray color Sunflower Burst by Ranger. Very pretty stuff that I highly recommend. The stamps are by Lawn Fawn with white heat embossing and the red is SU ink.

I finally had a reason to use that "I have to have it" honeycomb stencil by Tim Holtz. Again I used different colors of distress inks and an ink blender to create the angled pattern and sprayed it with the same stuff as above. The sentiment is a Cricut cut from the Just Cards cartridge and the bees are acetate dies by K and Co. I used the Xyron to adhere the bees to the cardstock.

Last one was a mix of experimenting. The green is Crackle Paint (Ranger) and I inked the edges with the same color distress ink-Peeled Paint. The top was inked with Salty Ocean distress ink. The sentiment is a stamp by Sweet Stamp Shoppe stamped with black Hero Arts ink. The scallop ribbon at the bottom is velvet and I stamped grass on it using a stamp by Lawn Fawn and green ink by SU. 

I made the butterfly by applying alcohol inks to glossy cardstock and once it was dry stamping the butterfly with black ink. I had actually stamped three of them but they didn't all stamp perfectly. So instead of throwing them out, I used the matching die to cut them out and layered them on top of each other putting foam adhesive in between each layer. I die cut the foam adhesive with the same die that I used for the stamps and glued the butterfly to the card.

Wow! That was a lot. Thanks for staying with me. I hope you are crafting this weekend.