1950's Decade ATC's

I made these ATC's for a decades swap on Scrapbook.com. I stamped the Deep Red Stamps Jukebox image onto Strathmore watercolor cardstock with Hero Arts black ink. I colored the image in with distress inks and a few areas with distress markers. I fussy cut the image out and went to work on the background.

I daubed distress ink colors: Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade and Ripe Persimmon, onto my craft sheet. I sprinkled the area with some powdered chalks such as gold, sunshine yellow and fluorescent colors pink orange and yellow. I had a bottle of iridescent paint that was almost empty which made it easy for me to splatter some onto the work area along with the inks and chalks. I sprayed the area generously with water and swirled the paint, inks and chalks together but just a little bit. I wanted to see what was going to come out of this witch's brew. I took some packaging that was white on one side and swiped it through the mixture in different areas and at different angles.

After I did the initial paper swipe, I thought that I should stop with this piece of paper now and grab another piece of paper to see what we will get next. So I played some more with other papers and noticed that the first one didn't have a good showing of yellow. 

When the colors get all mixed together yellow loses to the darker colors. I decided that while the paper was still drying I had time to sprinkle on some bright yellow (think sunflower) powdered chalk on top. You have to have a light hand when adding something at this point of the "make your own background" craziness or you'll have to start over. Ugh! Not happening. I put some chalk onto a tool to scrape off pictures that has a flat surface and tapped a little off with the one hand as the other moved around. I think it turned out really pretty. It's sad sometimes that all the hard work on the background gets covered it up with stuff. I wish I could become "one" with white space.  (Hard work is really more like a little kid playing with paints)

Here's a look at all three. The sentiment stickers are by Stampabilities, the music note is a Cricut die cut that I wrote on with a ZIG Millennium pink pen and the small stamp in between the notes/under the 1950's writing is a stamp by My Sentiments Exactly that I stamped with Hero Arts ink.

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for coming by.