Part 1 – Making The Backgrounds

Scrap chipboard
Ball point pen
Pencil
Paper cutter
Scissors
Metal ruler or straightedge for tearing
Glue sticks
Squeegee or bone folder
Old greeting cards
Cardstock scraps
Assorted decorative papers with floral and garden themes
Assorted light colored text-weight papers
Paper scraps with text
Commerical ATCs (optional)
Clean scrap paper for gluing
Gesso – white and matte clear
Paintbrush
Water container
Decorative scissors with faux stamp perforation pattern
Rubber stamps with greetings and sentiments
Floral, botanical and garden theme rubber stamps
Rubber stamping ink
Metallic gold or bronze paint
Optional – stickers, stencils, rub-ons, die cuts and other embellishments from your stash

I was looking through some old greeting cards to recycle recently, and made an observation. Delightful sights from nature are used for almost any kind of greeting card. Condolence, birthday, get well, Valentine, Easter, Mother’s Day, and many more. There are biological reasons for humans being cheered by images of nature. Whether or not we have studied the science behind how that works, it’s something we all instinctively seem to know. So here for you is the first of two parts of a tutorial on making Artist Trading Cards, or ATCs, from recycled greeting cards and nature-based imagery.

Instructions

Make yourself two templates from scrap chipboard. One 4 x 3 inches, another 3.5 x 2.5 inches. These are some standard sizes that commercial ATCs come in.

Use your templates to find spots on the cards that you want to use. Trace around them with ball point pen. Then cut them out. If the cards are on matte finish paper, and not slick, you could also do your tracing with pencil.

Sometimes when you buy a pad of decorative paper there is a sheet or two of cardstock imagery you can cut out. ATC sized rectangles are frequently included. Leftover cards from pocket scrapbooking kits can also make good bases for ATCs. When working on ATCs you’ll probably want to do several at a time, so go ahead and mix commercial and homemade ATC base cards if you want. Seeing all the imagery together could inspire you. That’s one reason I enjoy working with paper scraps and leftovers so much – the mixture encourages extra creativity.

Cover the parts of the card that you don’t want showing with decorative papers. I used mainly papers with a gardening and floral theme. Decorative papers with text and text torn from old books and magazines also work really well with this type of collage.

Cover the cards with solid pieces of paper, torn strips or free-form torn pieces.

Accent the cards with some brushed white gesso. If the gesso is too opaque, you can mix in some clear matte finish gesso.

Part 2 – Prepare Some Embellishments

Cut flowers, butterflies, birds and other garden theme items from old cards and decorative papers.

With a decorative scissors that simulates stamp perforations, it’s easy to make small stamp-like embellishments. Trim real stamps from envelopes, cut out small square images, or stamp small square designs.

Stamp out some sentiments on strips of paper torn with a metal ruler. I’ve painted some of the papers with white gesso for texture. I stamped assorted sentiments in black.

Part 3 – Embellishing the Cards

Tear out some of the stamped words and glue them to the cards.

Add postal images and cut out images of flowers, birds and butterflies.

Enhance with various rubber stamps until the cards look finished to you.

Paint the edges metallic gold or metallic bronze.

You’re done!