Once Upon a Time . . .

. . . is the theme for ArtFest 2010. ArtFest is an art retreat held in Port Townsend every March. There are usually several swaps that artists host and I signed up for two: Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and a Fatbook. I participated in both of these swaps last year at ArtFest and with a theme of fairy tales for this year's retreat, I sure didn't want to miss out.

For the Artist Trading Card swap, I created 32 cards and in return, I will receive 30 cards from 30 different artists. ATCs are 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 miniature pieces of art and here's how mine were created:








My Fatbook pages were also created around the theme of Fairy Tales. For this swap, I made 53 pages, all of the same thing, which were sent off yesterday to the hostess. The hostess will then take all of the pages she receives and make Fatbooks out of them -- my book will contain 50 pages of art from 50 different artists. It will be a wonderment of chunkiness (in fact, Fatbooks are also known as Chunky books)! The front of my pages are the little circus girl (with a glass bauble on her face) and the back of the book is the jolly guy with a band of glitter above his head. A little bundle of ribbon attached to the side, and viola! my pages were complete.







With these two swaps out of the way, I was able to check off a couple more projects. I think it's time to revamp my Projects board for the next quarter . . .

Swap-O-Rama

I joined two swaps at Artfest: a Fatbook and an ATC (Artist Trading Card) swap. The Fatbook swap required my making 52 4x4-inch pages and for the ATC swap I made 32 inidividual trading cards. Tonight was the night I got to pick up the completed projects. First, the Fatbook.

And now the ATCs.

Yowsa! Nothing like delayed gratification!

juSt Be.

Another swap bites the dust (boom boom), another swap bites the dust . . . .

I signed on to particpate in an ATC (Artist Trading Card) swap through Artfest, which is happening the first of April at Fort Worden in Port Townsend. The theme of this year's Artfest is Sea Monsters and Bee Shay, our ATC hostess, asked us to keep that theme in mind when creating our cards. We were also told we could add no embellishments. None. Nada. Whatsoever. WHAT!?! I must admit I struggled a bit with designing my card, especially since I couldn't add any bits and pieces (I always add bits and pieces). Finally, I just started painting the 2.5x3.5-inch cards, layering, scratching, and blotting. I had a background.

After some internet research, I found a copyright free image that I liked, so I printed multiple copies (32 to be exact) and while watching reruns of NCIS, I cut out the little winged, clawed, tailed beauties.

After stamping some words, adding an old-style compass, and gluing my lovely lady to the card, it was needing something more. So I added the words: juSt Be. and outlined it in gold metallic ink. As my two-year old grandson Emmett would say: Ta Da!

I'll be mailing them this afternoon.