ATCs that are special to me.

A few years ago I was a regular contributor to the Stampman ATC swap, but it became so busy that they couldn't cope with the practicalities as well as the running of the shop, so it closed. I knew it had restarted over a year ago but with my move to Spain, I never got around to joining in, but this month I decided to give it a go. You can find the details here.

The theme for July was Vintage. Now I have quite a pile of vintage photos that I have bought in sets, or downloaded onto my computer, but as I was thinking which ones to use, I had the idea to use something much more special to me, and that is this lovely photo of my maternal Grandparents. I never met them, but I just love this photo, taken around 1905 I think. She is so elegant and he so proud.

I made a few copies of the photo and for my first ATC I passed a memory glass slide through my little Xyron quick sticker, and pressed it over just my Grandmother's picture. I cut this out and edged it with aged mahogony distress ink. (This didn't dry properly but it did leave a hint of colour). Then I found some burgundy card with a gold sheen if you look at it at an angle, and embossed it in my cuttlebug. It looked a bit too good, so I sanded it, rubbed it with walnut stain distress ink and spritzed it with water. I glued a small strip of lace, left over from a scrapbook page, about two thirds of the way down, and mounted the slide at the left hand side. I then chose two feathers to glue the other side, (My ever-present lazy cat got so excited when I got my feather box out I think she would have attacked them all if I hadn't got the lid back on fast. I've never seen her so animated!), and then I knew it needed a flower to finish it off. My punches were all too large or too small, so I found a selection of paper flowers from my stash, all variations of pink and white. I rubbed tea dye and victorian velvet inks onto my craft mat and spritzed them, and let my paper flowers soak it all up. With some difficulty I then layered them up with a brad fastener through the centre, screwed them up and passed the petal edges through aged mahogony and walnut stain ink. Then I flattened it out, and when it was dry I glued it to the base of the feathers.

Then I thought I would use just my Grandfather's image for the second one. Although this photo was taken prior to the Great War, and though to the best of my knowledge he didn't die in that war, I have used his photo before to represent 'the great fallen', (See my top right side bar), and I wanted to do so again. Using a lighter brown base card I cut a mask and stamped part of the Crafty Individuals poppy field stamp across the base. I used copic markers to add a little subtle colour. I then used old paper distress ink to colour some ordinary copy paper and printed out the words of one verse from the Ballad of Willie McBride, also known as The Green Fields of France. This is a very poignant song that I have loved ever since I first heard it many years ago at a folk club. If you are not familiar with it, do spare a moment or two to read the rest of the lyrics which you will find one version of here, though there are are several others with small differences. This is the version I have on CD so I am more familiar with it. To make the 'brown leather frame, I screwed up a small piece of brown card, and rubbed it with walnut stain ink and then spritzed it, and left it to dry. Then I tore round the words and layered them up with the framed photo. I used two very small paper flowers, colouring them with barn door ink as for the flower above, and fixed them with a black mini-brad to make a poppy for the top right corner, and in the left I added two brown folk-heart brads.

I needed one more card for my swap, so this time I used the photo of both of them and added a metal frame from my stash. I had a piece of card, partially embossed, left over from my first ATC so I used that as the base. In the main photo, the 'props' were a fence and trailing leaves which gave me the idea to use a small piece of green mesh cut on the bias to represent a trellis, and some woven fibre 'ribbon' for the leaves. It lacked something so I added random tiny pearls for flowers. Then I found some beads from recycled jewellry that I buy in local markets, and threaded them on brown cord to hang below the picture, and covered the rather untidy join with a small cream organza bow. I hope you think I did my grandparents proud.

As well as the Stampman swap, I am entering these for the
Make it Monday linky party number 45.
Theme Thursday Challenge: Vintage.
Art Impressions Challenge 23: Use something from your stash.
One Stitch at a Time Challenge 70: Anything goes.

I am also linking to a new challenge for me called ABC because their current challenge is Y is for Yesterday. I am not sure if entries are meant to be a greetings card, but these fit the bill so well that I am giving it a try. I'm sure if it is only cards, they will let me know for next time.