A little lavender with a touch of rust

Hello all, and welcome to another new week and another new theme over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where I am honoured to be in the Designer Spotlight, playing alongside the amazing design team for the month of August.

"Little" and "a touch" are the operative words in the post title, because the challenge this week is ATCs - Artist Trading Cards, those small areas of creative real estate, 3.5 x 2.5 inches in size.

I've always loved working in a smaller scale (check out my Dollshouse creations if you've not seen them before), and ATCs were a regular feature here at Words & Pictures in the early days of my crafting journey.

In 2012/13 I was a member of the design team for a much-missed challenge called Fun With ATCs, so tiny creations on various themes turned up here every week.  Whenever I make an ATC these days I remember how much I enjoy them and this one was no exception!

(You can catch up with all my ATCs - or at least the ones I remembered to label! - by clicking the ATCs label at the foot of the post.)

For some reason, the tiny playing area always makes me want to cram as many mixed media goodies onto it as possible.

So on here you'll find crackle, rust, metal embellishing, die-cuts, ephemera and of course lots of paint and ink creating the setting for my real lavender stems.







The stems slightly over-step the boundaries of the ATC, but I hope I'll be forgiven.  Since the original purpose of the ATC format is for artists to trade samples of their work with each other, this might be a slight fail on that front too... 

I'm thinking it would be pretty tricky to send through this the post in a good state of preservation, but I'm sure it could be done!

I don't have all my usual process photos for this one, I'm afraid.  I started out by putting some opaque crackle paste onto an MDF ATC through the lovely Tim Holtz Trellis stencil.

But after that I seem to have entered a state of creative flow, and forgot to stop for any more photos, sorry!















But I can still tell you what's what... starting with those stems.  They were part of the gift-wrap decorations for one of the presents given to my 102-year old neighbour a couple of weeks ago.  Waste not, want not, eh?













Once the crackle had nicely crackled, I dribbled on some sprays, both Distress Ink and Distress Oxide (I think I tried out Stormy Sky, Dusty Concord and maybe some Shaded Lilac) and let it sink down into all the nooks and crannies.

(You might think I should have used Milled Lavender, but it wasn't the right shade for this ATC!)












Then I layered up some tiny ephemera pieces from the Idea-ology Snippets pack.














These teeny tiny fragments are just perfect for ATCs, and I had a lovely fiddly time selecting and arranging the adverts and labels and tickets.












The lavender seemed to need a bit of extra greenery behind it, so it was out with the Distress Inks and Oxides in shades of green to make some lovely mottled grassy stems.

They are cut using the Wildflower Stems Thinlits, sets 1 and 2.












The beautiful butterfly couldn't be simpler... he's one of the set of Transparent Wings (the earlier release where they're all clear - the new ones have coloured wings too).













He has perched, just for a moment, on the top of a trinket pin, resting against the lavender stems.  I just love how the acetate catches the light at different angles.













The whole thing is bound together with some rusty wire and - inspired by own Heavy Metal ATCs from last month (some extra ATC inspiration there if you want it!) - I helped that rusty decay "bleed" onto the crackled background behind.













There's a little bit of Grit Paste added first for texture, and then washes of DecoArt Fluid Acrylics in Payne's Grey and Quinacridone Gold, added and knocked back and added again until I was pleased with the look.













Oh, I almost forgot the words!  Over the top of each batch of ephemera, there's also a ChitChat sticker.

It took me a while to select the right two words, which can be read in either direction, depending on which one you notice first...














"Peace, always," or "Always peace," - I'd happily accept either one right now.













I added some splatter using a mixture of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics in Lavender (of course!) and Wisteria.














I love these darker speckles alongside my more usual dusting of white.













In fact the lavender heads had faded to a rather dull grey, so I used the same paints to touch them up a little.  I bet you didn't notice... that's how good the PaperArtsy colours are.














And the good news is, as my brother pointed out when he saw this ATC in real life, you can still smell the lavender, which is the really important thing after all!














Speaking of important things, I find that it's moments like this at the craft table, caught up in the flow, playing with your favourite things - whether that's ink or paint or paper or rusty wire - that provide some relief from the wider troubles of the world at large.





Personally, I think it counts as a political act to continue to celebrate creativity and beauty in the face of the bleak political times we seem to be in.  And of course the connections we all share in our crafting corner of the internet are a source of light to defy the darker purposes to which this technology can also be turned.

So however small it feels in the face of everything going on, this shared creativity matters, now more than ever.  I hope you'll be inspired to create something this week, so that we artists (there, I said it) can all continue to trade in inspiration, beauty and light.

And if whatever you create happens to be Artist Trading Card-sized, come and play along at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where you could, as a bonus, be in with a chance to win a $50 shopping spree at Simon Says Stamp.

As always, there's some glorious inspiration from the incredible SSS design team, so we hope you'll come and share your ATCs there this week.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you've enjoyed your visit.  See you again soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

P.S. If you like small things, there's a new post over at Cestina's dolls houses to enjoy too.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr

I'd like to play along at Country View Challenges where the theme this month is Texture
At Moo Mania and More they are looking for Butterflies... found one!
Emerald Creek Dares are daring us to have High Hopes - I don't think you can hope much higher than peace, creativity and light
At the Bleeding Art Challenge they are all mixed media and full-time Anything Goes
I'd also like to join in with It's a Bug's Life over at Crafty Cardmakers