Making Artist Trading Cards

It has been difficult to find time to post on this blog for the past few weeks because of a succession of illnesses and a bereavement in the family. Just to keep things flowing I hope you won't mind if I take stock of where I am with my series of Squidoo lenses (=web page) on the subject of ATC's.

My very firt Artist trading card in watercolour - sold on Ebay. 

Portmerion, location for The Village in The Prisoner (TV series)

I originally started writing these lenses as a way of recording some of the research I was doing on the internet to widen my knowledge of the subject of ATC's. As a painter, I had discovered the format on Ebay and sold around 80 watercolour cards (ACEO's as they were sold!) within about 12 months or so. But of course I couldn't fail to notice the mixed media and collaged versions. These attracted my attention and I wanted to find out all I could about them -how many ways of making them were there? How should I display or collect them? Can I make and sell them? A lot of these answers were readily available and I joined a number of groups wher I became addiccted to swapping and forgot all about selling the cards. I now have a large collection and these lenses represent a personal view of this hobby.

A scultured artist trading card, made using layers of tissue paper.

There are four lenses which tell my story and record what I found on the web and these themselves link to other lenses which cover more specific information, such as tutorials for beginners and easy and free backgrounds for mixed media cards. The links to the main lenses are:-

• making, collecting and selling artist trading cards
• making artist trading cards
• collecting and displaying artist trading cards
• selling and trading artist trading cards

• simple collaged artist trading cards for beginners
• ideas for framing artist trading cards
• how to make easy atc backgrounds
• atc's with a difference

I hope to go on adding to this tally and by so doing increase my personal knowledge and interest in this fascinating and addictive hobby. May you find something in these lenses which will be of interest to you.