ATC inspired by Claudine Hellmuth

This week's challenge over at the CropStop Challenge Blog is to make an Artist Trading Card (ATC) inspired by Claudine Hellmuth. This was definitely a challenge for me because I've never made an ATC in my life!! Not only did I have to look up what an ATC was, but then I had to look up Claudine Hellmuth. She's been featured on many shows including Martha Stewart. Fortunately for me, there were a lot of YouTube videos and information that came up when I did my search. Here's a link from her Martha Stewart appearance.

One of the things she's known for is her photo collages. They kind of have that 1950s vintage paper doll look to them. She also uses canvas and acrylic paints on a lot of her work. You can buy her products at CropStop here. Her acrylic paints come in 15 colors, but can be mixed together in different combinations to produce over 51 true colors. The colors do not become muddy when mixed together, which is AWESOME! Check out her color-mixing video here.

Here is my first attempt at an ATC (these little babies are small...they only measure 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"):

I used canvas with a triple coating of Gesso (this is basically a white primer for the canvas so the paint goes on smooth and bright). You can purchase Claudine's sticky-back canvas here. For the blue, I watered down some acrylic paint and used Claudine Hellmuth's paint brushes to spread the acrylic across the top. I didn't have any green acrylic paint so I used my Apple Green Prismacolor Marker for the bottom green area.

The stamps are all CTMH (True Happiness D1365 & Wishing Star D1333). I used Black Staz-On ink to stamp the images on an extra piece of canvas. When you stamp on canvas it doesn't produce a very crisp image because of the ridges in the canvas, so I took my Copic Mulitliner SP-0.1 and went over the stamped images. Then I cut them out and glued them to my ATC.

I took a photo of my son, reduced the size on my copier, and made a black and white copy. I used tracing paper to trace his clothes, keeping the lines simple like a paper doll. I photocopied the tracing paper image onto white cardstock and cut it out. I cut out the face from the black and white photo and glued it to the traced cut-out.

I colored his clothes with Copics B02, BV23, and Colorless Blender. For the skin parts I used E51. I used Sweet Pea Flower Soft for the bouquet of flowers, and just used a Green Sharpie to draw in the flower stems. To give my ATC some dimension, I used pop-dots to raise the paper doll off the ATC.

I hope this inspires you to try your hand at making an Artist Trading Card. Here's a link I found that goes over the general rules for making and trading an ATC....yes, there are rules! Now....go make one of these little treasures and link it to our challenge at CropStop for a chance at winning! Also, don't forget about the 10% discount code located on my sidebar for the CropStop store....they ship fast!!

I also want to say a big thank you to all of you for stopping by my blog and leaving me love! You guys are always so kind and your feedback is so inspiring and uplifting!

Hugs,
Rosemary