Birthday Bloghop

Hello all... So glad you could drop in today!  We're celebrating Fun With ATCs's third birthday with a bloghop.  There are prizes and inspiration galore, so you make sure you visit all my fellow team members, leaving comments wherever you go, and enter our challenge for a chance to win.  We have some wonderful sponsors: Tando Creative, Visible Image and 100 Proof Press.  

You should have arrived here from Uta's lovely blog, Streifenhörnchen's Stamp World, and your next stop is with the amazing Caro, whom some of you will know as cbee, and who has organised this whole thing, so she deserves a lot of love!  If you're not already hopping, the best place to start is here, where you will find all the details...

Appropriately, our theme for the challenge this fortnight is Birthday/Celebration.  Show us your party ATCs...  And I'm offering up two samples for inspiration - the extra one happened by accident as I was making the other!

Regular followers will see I'm still on my turquoise kick, and it's a double whammy today, so let's start with the one I intended to make...

I started with some leftover Christmas cracker paper, which seemed appropriate for a Celebration ATC.  We had those musical crackers with little pipes inside - everyone ends up with a numbered pipe or two and a "conductor" points at the numbers in turn to build up a tune.  We did pretty well, even with a nine-year-old and a four-year-old in the "orchestra".

Brilliantly, from my perspective, the wrappings were music manuscript paper, and the hats were made of music tissue paper - perfect for crafting, so you'll be seeing more of it.  




I did have to share it with my sister-in-law, mind you, Laura of Laurart... so don't be surprised if you see some popping up over there too.

I cut a thick piece of chipboard to ATC size (2.5 x 3.5 inches) and covered it with the cracker paper.  

Then I used my Tando mask, Distorted Hive (which I won on one of their hops!), to blend some Peacock Feathers DI onto the surface.

I wanted to use my Tim Holtz Alphaparts to "write" the word Celebrate, but I had to check it would fit.  Rather than put the sticky-backed letters down on my newly inked surface, I tried them on a spare bit of card, cut to size.  

Once I'd higgledy-piggled them into place, I started to alter them - they start out as black plastic - and here's where the accidental ATC started to kick in.  Since they were gently stuck to the card, I left them there.  

It was much easier to paint them held in place.  I started with a coat of Mermaid Fresco paint, and then added a wash of Beach Hut and one of (shock, horror) some not-Fresco but DecoArt paint in Blue Green Light.   The final touch was a smearing of Treasure Gold wax in White Fire.

While they were drying, I used another Tando mask, Sequin Waste, to add some texture paste to the corners of my ATC.  By looking at my spare, I could see where they wouldn't interfere with the lettering.  

Once the paste was dry, I used embossing ink with some Ranger Verdigris embossing powder to give the dots a distressed coppery look.  (I think the brilliant Claudia, die amelie - who you'll have already met on the hop - and I must have discovered this stuff at exactly the same time!)  They also got a little touch of Treasure Gold to highlight the texture.  


Then I went to peel the dried lettering off my spare card, and found that they'd left behind a stencilled version of themselves... beautifully highlighted by the layers of paint around it.  For a while, I left it alone, but it kept calling me and so I started to play with it. 

Now that I'd fulfilled my duty with one ATC, I was free to really mess about with this one - and here's where it got me:

For once, the sunshine has failed me at the point when I need it, so it's hard to show you this one in its full glossy glory!  The painty background is pretty much exactly as it was after painting the letters.

I toyed with leaving the letters in pale cream (the colour of the card), but yielded to the temptation of trying out the metallic turquoise Viva paint - possibly the most beautiful iridescent paint I've ever seen.  

And perhaps I should have left it at that, but I also added some Glossy Accents to the letters for dimensionality - definitely fun and funky - but not easy to get a good picture of!

At some point last year, I got some very cheap metal embellishments from ebay... flat, aluminium shapes which I thought I could zhuzh up a bit.  

You can see two of them here... embossed with a tiny Vintaj embossing folder and given some Bottle and Denim alcohol ink treatment.

Once there were cogs on my metal stars, it was a short step to adding some stamped cogs to the ATC itself.  These are from the Chronology range by Papermania, stamped in Cobalt Archival.

And hey, we're only messing around, so let's see what happens if we take a border punch to the edges of the whole thing, eh?!





So those are my dimensional double party celebrations - happy 3rd birthday to Fun With ATCs! - and we really hope that, as well as enjoying today's bloghop, you'll be able to play along with our Birthday/Celebration challenge this fortnight.  

Can't wait to see what you come up with...

Thanks so much for visiting me on my first ever bloghop - I'm more grateful than I can say for your continued support.  Next stop, Caro - have fun!

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
Oprah Winfrey

Oh, and if you've time to kill... I've also got a new project over at Artistic Outpost today (but you will get to catch up with it here soon).