Artist Trading Cards

Another stack of Artist Trading Cards. As always, these employ layer upon layer of grungy, distressed collage work, a hefty dose of transparencies and three-dimensional embellishments and found objects, including a little baby bracelet and a real fossilized trilobite.

Liger

My very first Artist Trading Card. My collage art started with altered books. Ever since I can remember I've been gluing little pictures and scraps of paper into secret notebooks and journals, which led me to band up with other collage artists for long afternoons spent cutting and pasting and drinking coffee and chatting. It was during these scrap sessions that I was introduced to the world of Artist Trading Cards and promptly delved in with a flourish. This one incorporates copper pipe tape, rub-on transfers, enamel ink, and multiple transparencies, most notably one of Napoleon Dynamite's liger sketch.

Mood Swing

Another smattering of Artist Trading Cards. The Mood Swing series, created for an art journaling group in response to a personal demons challenge, features black crackle embossing and steel bands snipped from automotive cable ties. Below, Revolt incorporates a healthy dose of collage, red metal accents and several layers of acrylic textural glaze. Marilyn features hand set eyelets, sewn accents and a ton of pink ink. Of all the cards I've completed, though, The United is my absolute favorite, hands down. (Forgive the pun. I couldn't resist.) It features a genuine two-dollar bill, rusted tin and plenty of distress ink. It's the one ATC I can't part with.

Artist Trading Cards

A selection of Artist Trading Cards created for various swaps and journal challenges. Above from left, Enigma includes collage elements from a Medieval religious text and plastic transparencies created by printing black and white images on clear overhead projector film. Breathe is one of my sparser cards with an old German book page in the background, a few snippets from National Geographic magazine and tiny metal rivets. In contrast, Bonded, is the result of about eight layers of assorted junk, including old book pages, transparencies, vintage twine and a handmade mica charm.

Above, Nevermore, created for an Edgar Allen Poe swap, includes a blown-ink background, an original chalk and ink illustration and embossed stamping. The last two cards were on-the-fly creations meant to make use of extraneous ephemera scattered across the table following a lengthy collage session. Rather than forcing myself to clean up the bits and pieces laying about, I'll often just frantically glue them down somewhere ... anywhere. I'm actually quite amazed that I haven't started gluing random scraps to the walls, though I have been tempted!

Above, a Smiths-inspired collection created for a melancholy-themed swap. Cards include transparencies, text created with a vintage label maker and a colored pencil illustration of an eye. Below, more transparency-heavy assemblages.