A Bevy of ATC's

I'm a member of an ATC swap group and recently did a swap in the theme of 'Green', another with the theme of 'Keys'.  I finally did a swap with any theme.  These tiny pieces of art are sometimes difficult for me and challenge me to be simple.
They are all very different ATCs with many products so I won't go through how they are all made.  If anyone would like to know you can always drop me an email :)

Here are the nine ATC I made this month.

ATC Green Flowers

ATC Green Leaves

ATC Green Bow

ATC Forgot my key

ATC Queens Key

ATC Bronze Keys

ATC Super Star Diva

ATC Whats the time

ATC Essence

Childhood happiness

Today on Three Muses we are asked to create a journal page to illustrate a favourite phrase or song.   I have created a page in my large journal based on a favourite quote - Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it!

Raw Journal Page

The background has more layers than an onion and began life with a gesso base, then spray inks, then several layers of paint, then several layers of stamping, then some stencil work.

When I thought of what makes me happy, I decided that today it's flowers and happy faces.  I stamped the flowers on white card stock and coloured them in with  markers, before giving each one a smiley face using Posca paints.

I painted the flower stems in green metallic paint (I don't know why) and did a white translucent halo for each flower.  The writing is very childlike completing the image.

I have to smile every time I look at this page.

Everything is coming up roses

The Take a Word challenge this week was Hearts and Flowers.  I  don't usually 'do' cute, romantic things,  I'm more of a brights and bolds type of person.  However, the aim is to challenge myself so off I went into a brave new world!

Hearts and Flowers Box

 I had the idea to take the challenge literally but knew the weight of the flowers and the heart would not be suitable for paper, so I decided to alter a small wooden box.

I have been playing around with the flowers for a few days now until I arrived at a method that resulted in something that looked like a flower.  Eventually I used white card stock, die cut with two separate Sizzix dies and then applied a treatment of water and distress ink.

The heart I made from white polymer clay and imprinted with a floral stamp before baking and colouring with a pale pink paint with iridescent medium, working it well into the grooves.  I then over painted with a colour to match the flowers which turned out to be a kind of apricot although the ink was tattered rose (pink)

 I treated the box to various distress techniques, from crackle paint, distress ink, distressed ribbon etc

This is a view of the crackle paint by Viva, I really like the way it cracks.  I rubbed the cracks with distress ink to get the ink into the cracks before removing the ink from the surface.

I made a video of how I did this and have put it on my YouTube channel here.