Beginner's - ArtTrader Magazine

Art TRADER
m a g a z i n e
Before moving on, I use a permanent paint marker in black to edge
my cards, and I draw a crude border on the card with a Caran d’Ache
watercolor crayon. Again, I don’t worry about matching the colors.
I have been on a kick of using pink or lavender crayon lately, but it
rarely matches the paper I use. I smudge the crayon with a dampened
paintbrush and let it dry. Edging a card, especially a collage, with marker
and crayon adds a finished, framed look to it that I really like.
While cards dry, I select a few pieces of painted paper towel or vintage
book text to add to the cards. I paint paper towels ahead of time, in
batches of 6 or so at a time, to that I have them handy when I want to
use them in ATCs or chunky book pages.
I also cut out a few images and run them through my Xyron. For these
cards, I am using anatomical hearts I printed from an anatomy book
I own. I center each heart on a small torn square of painted paper
towel, then use a zigzag stitch on my sewing machine to edge the heart.
Again, this is just to add some textural interest.
A note on the images I use—I own a large number of antique and vintage
photos, which I try to purchase as inexpensively as possible. Occasionally,
I’ll find a handful of photos at a thrift shop, but I’ve bought shoeboxes
of photos at flea markets, too. I’m always compiling and making my
own collage sheets from these snapshots as well as from copyright-free
online images. While Google Image Search is often valuable when I
need to find a particular type of image, I try to avoid using photography
from the Internet, so that I’m not violating any copyrights.
I try to avoid using a lot of purchased images or collage sheets/CDs, just
because I feel that I can find weirder or more unique photos and images
on my own. Like with my painted and altered papers, when I’m not in
the mood to actually make art, I’ll often watch television or a DVD while
cutting out a small pile of images from magazines, scans or rubberstamping
sessions.
At this point in making my cards, I adhere the paper towel square to the
card that has been drying. To this, I add a few scraps of vintage text—
for these cards, the text bits are taken from a French/English medical
dictionary—I’m always pleased when I can use seemingly random text
to make a statement, or add an additional meaning, to a card—and it’s
a bonus when I get a laugh out of it!
I then often add stamped images to my cards—in this case, I added a
set of wings to the heart and some typewriter keys around the edges.
I often lightly color the images with Prismacolor pencils and gel pens. I
love to add brightly-colored stars with gel pens and spiraling swirls with
metallic marker in random places on the surface of the card, too.
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