Friday, April 10, 2009

ATC Swapped

My first grown-up ATC swap (can you believe that Will did an ATC swap before I did?) was pretty much super-fun, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Here's my X card, entitled "Mac's X-Ray":
This didn't photograph well, but it's an x-ray image of a brain tumor that my Mac (different from my Matt--rumor has it that Papa, who is hard of hearing and before my marriage saw me with my best friend as much as he saw me with my boyfriend, combined with the fact that Mac, my best man, wore a tux that was carelessly identical to Matt's, never was quite sure exactly which guy I was marrying until the actual marriage. Gawd, how I love all three of those dumb guys) battled a few years ago, printed onto transparency film and stitched to Bristol board. The words were printed individually onto adhesive paper and adhered to the front of the transparency (I'm afraid they're going to fall off, though--next time, I should figure out how to attach them from the other side of the transparency?)

Here's the X ATC of one of my swap partners. It's entitled "X-Ray":
It's three ATCs that accordion together using those metal rings, which is awesome cool. The images are x-rays printed onto matte paper and then glued onto the ATC paper.

Here's another X, by a different swap partner. It's entitled "Xenograft:"
The top and bottom of the figure are individually cut out and glued together--the proportions are perfect, which amazes me. The background is stamped with lots of letter x, and the postage stamps carry the letter, too.
Here's the V card from a swap partner--it's entitled "V=Villain":
There are a ton of collage elements to notice here--photos, typing, black-and-white copy images, inked parts, parts shaded in with colored pencil, etc.

Here's my W card, entitled "My Little Willow Tree:"
It's cotton quilting fabric quilted to Bristol board, then embroidered using the free-hand tool on my sewing machine with a willow tree.
And here's my V card, entitled "Aunt Vicki":

Again, the photo is lousy, because it's really hard to photograph a transparency. This is a photo of my Aunt Vicki printed onto a vintage book page (The Christmas Carol, I believe), lined up exactly with an identical photo printed on an overhead transparency--they're all quilted to Bristol board with a double row of stitching. The words are again printed individually on sticker paper and adhered to the top, and I'm betting they fall off before the year is out.

I think it takes a year to do all the swaps to equal an entire alphabet--how cool would that be?

Oh, no--I am now also obsessed with alphabets.

3 comments:

  1. these are great. i really love them.

    carl and i have been making a few, but ours are just watercolors, for the most part. can't wait to explore the ATC format more.

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  2. Very cool ATCs! I've not tried making any yet...maybe one day, when I no longer need to sleep, I'll add that to my list of things to do.

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  3. I have this theory about one day getting the babies diagnosed with ADHD so that I can steal their ritalin, or maybe becoming a meth mom, JUST so that I can have MORE TIME!!!

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