Recycling Can be Beautiful!

The ATC exchange group, “Arts in the Cards” had Reduce, Reuse, Recycle as our latest theme. With ATC’s being so small, they are a great way to use little bits of this and that to create unique art pieces.

For this group of cards, I began with a piece of fabric paper that I made at least a year ago. It consists of a faded  piece of fabric covered with pages from an old book, pictures from gardening catalogs, and tissue papers saved from gifts I had received. Much of the surface was covered with pearlescent medium and I had stamped some large butterflies with blue paint. I started by drawing lines for the edges of the cards so I knew how to lay things out for each card. If I had paid attention earlier, I would have noticed that the left 3 cards were drawn too small… I found that out when I was cutting the cards apart in one of the final steps…. Oops!!

The next step was to add the “waste” from a couple pages of postage stamps. These were from Hawaiian Rain Forest stamps that Ken came home with after I asked him to get me some “pretty” stamps…. flowers preferably….. The Hawaiian stamps were the prettiest the post office he went to had. After the stamps were used, there were a lot of pretty “stickers” left behind. I left many of the pieces as they were, and cut others apart. The above photo shows the paper fabric with the stamp waste applied.

Once I had the stamp waste on, I tried to figure out where I was going to place some pink paper that I made from junk mail and waste paper from the printer, that I had textured by pressing heavy lace into the wet pulp.  (A little piece of the paper is in the above photo with colored in circles on it, next to the glitter.) The paper didn’t look right, so I pulled out my pearlescent medium and a flower stamp to add flowers with. The flowers were too pale, so I added fuschia colored glitter to the wet medium. The glittery flowers lost their definition, but added lots of color. I then stamped more flowers with white opaque paint, and even added white over the glittered flowers. I still wasn’t happy with the flowers, so I pulled out my Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils to add more color. I added yellow to the flower centers, and orange to the petals.

Somehow while clearing my cutting table to work on or finding supplies, I found a piece of black sheer fabric with the glittery butterflies.  The fabric was already backed with Wonder Under, so I cut out the butterflies and added them. I didn’t have enough for each card, so I found a chunk of printed organza backed with Wonder Under with butterflies and flowers on it. I cut out butterflies for the cards that needed them and also some flowers and leaves to add to other cards that were lacking. The white organza didn’t show up very well, so I used more of the pencils to brighten them up. I added fuschia and orange to the butterflies, and made their bodies and antennae black. The photo above is what the cards looked like just before I cut them apart.

I added Wonder Under to the back of this piece, so I could fuse to card stock backs. When I cut the first 3 cards from the left end of the piece, I realized that I had not measured right for my first line and they were all nearly 1/4″ too short. No problem, I used trimmings from other cards to add to the short ones to make them the correct size (I thought I had all of the cards a bit oversized…. Not).

The cut pieces were fused to the card stock backs, and I colored the edges using a lavender stamp pad that I had never used…. One of those things I picked up from the craft store, thinking it would come in handy some day. In my excitement to get the finished  cards out in the mail to their new owners, I forgot to take photos of all of the cards in the batch…. Above is a photo of the card I am keeping for myself, and 3 extra cards. Thankfully I had a few extras or I would have only had one finished card to show.

It was fun playing with things that would have ended up in the trash or were just being ignored. I also like the images on the postage stamps and around them. Since things are so icy outside still, I could at least play with flowers indoors and dream of visiting Hawaii….  Soon, three of the above cards will be available as ACEO’s for sale in my ArtFire Studio…. I’ll add a link when they are listed…. I guess it’s time for sleep now….