By now, everyone and their mothers know that "Yatta" means "I did it!!" (Hiro, my favourite character from the Heroes t.v show, popularized the word). And it was like I totally felt today, when FINALLY Claudio brought me the damned toner photocopies of images I printed.

Milly, the colorless blender thing didn't worked for me :( I tried several times with different images and different papers and solvents until I found one that worked. My best results were on a smooth paper (for marker coloring) and using nail polish remover as my transfering medium, LOL. I found that better results are achieved when rubbing nail polish remover both on the front of the paper where I wanted to transfer the image and then on the back of the image to transfer. I even could transfer some color from some laser photocopies :)

On the left one I applied solvent both in the paper to transfer and in the back of the image and scrubbed with a spoon. On the right one it was only on the back of the image to transfer.

My only complaint is that toner photocopies are really expensive. I mean, it is $1 for one letter sized sheet, and it was $0.50 for the laser photocopies, which is also pretty expensive for me. I mean, being a student I'm used to photocopy for 2c each one on photocopy center around the university. I'm not really used to this thing of going to professional photocopy center.

I'll have to go, though. Because in my experiments I used almost all the images I had in mind for the definitive ATCs. I'll work on getting a better "collage sheet" over the weekend so I can send it to photocopy on monday or so :3 I want to paint a background for them and then transfer the images.

Argh, I always make it so hard on myself on just little card. I should probably start making easier things for trades, so I won't take so much time doing then. And my hand were sore for scrubbing so hard with a spoon D:

Some time ago I posted about a personal trade with lw2dragonflies, she wanted some ATCs with some of our local holidays/festivities as theme.

Both were hard to produce, I had to search a lot of reference pictures to make them as accurate as I could. But it was also difficult to not get inspired to make a card about our "Fiestas Patrias" when we were actually celebrating them :p

So, the "huaso" is the most important tipical character here in my country. Still, in the rural zones of the central regions of Chile, there's people that dress like that :) Surrounding the huaso we have our national flower (the "copihue"), kites and trompos, which are both tipical games.

The scanner didn't get the colors too well they're more subtle and brown-ish. This one was painted it two steps: first I applied brown in different tones (ochre where lighter colors would be, a dark brown/black tone where the darkest color) and then I painted with the colors, so that would be a "antique" look to the painting. The background is not white, it's a light blue with ochre :p

Inking is a little screwed, because my pen nib broke :( The kite was the first thing I inked with sepia ink, where the lineart is worse, the rest was done with a fine brush.

So... with this I declare my trade with lw2dragonflies FINALLY over :D I already made the envelope and have both cards ready to be send tomorrow.

Whew, I finalled finished my ATCs for the "Next 9x9 Swap" hosted by heymaggie on ATCards.com. Ladies, let me tell you this is a *huge* task for someone like myself, who had only participated in 5/5 swaps. And I like to make my life even worse, by making 3 different design and all handpainted and stuff. I spent way too much time doing them.

I'm waaaaay to tired to start scanning and fixing and uploading right now (just thinking of it makes me sleepy), so it'll have to hold until tomorrow morning, because I have clases a little later than usual (10:30am).

On other notices, I sent "Wishlist" RAKs to Paperfairys and Robin. Hope they arrive soon!

Good night people, so you all tomorrow! :)

ETA (09/11): Here they are in all their glory! I will only post pictures since I gotta run for school, but I'm free in the afternoon so I'll have time to add a description :) As always, they're uploaded on my Flickr account if you want to see a bigger version and a somewhat lame description :p


So, I started with a 7,5"x10,5" piece of Fabriano paper, and I discovered that the sheets of the block I buy are perfect for making two sets of 9 ATC blanks, with only a 0,1" scrap on one side.

The background was painted in two rounds with two differrent techniques: first I did a light wash with lots of water and little watercolor, letting the colors blend by themselves with the water, added a little bit of salt and let dry outside for a day. Usually, it's a pain to remove the salt from the paper, and I always ended up screwing up the paper bu rubbing so hard. Not anymore, I found a little useful tool <3 (that I NEVER imagined it'd be useful for this, LOL). Then I splattered some more watercolor with a syringer (i can't make "nice" splatter with a brush :( ), then dry outside again.

When the background was done I cuted it to the ATC-size and added a sturdy background. Then, I traced every design on 3 ATCs and added little details with white and red gouache paint. The lineart is made with COPIC multiliners, which are awesome because they're anything-proof (bad thing I only have black ones)

Lastly, but not least (I think), I choosed one of Pablo Neruda's poems ("Poem 20" to be exactly) to add random verses on the big empty spaces of my cards. I like to incorporate something "chilean" on my cards from time to time, so I can make my country a little more known abroad :)

A while back there was a thread about the back designs for ATCs. I knew that you had to put osme information on the back of the cards, but I haven't seen people actually making design specially for it. It seemed like an interesting concept, so I tried it myself :)

I doodled the birds design last night (I have a scan of the sketch on my Flickr, too). My first idea was to make a vector design on Illustrator, but after a couple of hours of total frustration I gave up on that and simply "traced" the design on the program (which is an awesome feature). Then I added text with a font named "A Yummy Apology" from DaFont.com, I think the curly font matches my design :)

Then, I saved it into a JPG format, but it turned out really low quality and looked like poo when I printed. The BMP version seems better, but my Open Canvas won't open it (on OC I know how to print ip to 9 backs on a Letter sized paper). I'll try my luck with Word :p

Comments, ideas? Did I mispelled something or forgot important information? Please, let me know if you like it.

"Este 16 de Julio sale la reina a pasear, saludando al peregrino que la viene a venerar"

Someone on ATCards.com requested a card from me that featured traditional festivities/holidays from my country. I thought it was pretty cool that someone actually cared for these things, so I decided to put all my soul on the 2 cards I'll be making for her ;)

This one, the first, is about a festival that takes place in the town of "La Tirana" in the inner part of the Tarapacá Region. This town venerates the Virgin of La Tirana, and every year on the 16th day of July the image of the virgin is taken out from the local church and "takes a walk" around town, while everyone dances around her (gypsies, natives, etc). There are even these folks dressed as demons that used to scare the hell out of me when I was little (lower left corner, my drawing doesn't make them justice!).

My father likes to make us go to La Tirana every year, to spend time with family and such, thought we (me and my sister) don't really like it now and we make sure he knows, LOL :p

Moving on, I've noticed I'm having a hard time drawing directly on the 2,5"x3,5" format so I decided to sketch in the double of that size (5"x7") the I scanned and printed in the correct size. It's a lot of work, because I still have to copy it to the ATC blank, since I want to paint this with watercolors and the ink from my printer bleeds.

I was thinking about painting the original too and maybe make some ATC-sized prints, if anyone is interested :D

Not too much "craftiness" this weekend, I'm afraid :( On Friday I made a watercolored ATC but I don't want to post it here until it's all done.

Here's is a little project I was working on yesterday, it's a sketch of my entry for the Postage Stamp ATC Swap on ATCards.com hosted by Carol Schmidt (who I know from Nness.org and she's a great host!).

This weekend I worked on my living room rather than in my little corner on the "computer's room" because I wanted to work with watercolor and I prefer to paint with daylight (and the light in the other room kinda sucks). You can't notice but this picture was actually taken on my living table <3

I love this series of stamps <3 You probably don't know but I'm an amateur philatelist for some years now. It was this hobbie that got me into the mailart/penpalling world. So, I thought this was a perfect swap to join and show the world the stamps in my country. In general I don't  consider the stamps in my country to be amazingly beautiful but this series of endangered species from my country is by far my favourite (better news, the stamps this year are actually better than in previous ones, yay! :3), most of the stamps feature birds, but I've also seen one with a wild-cat.

Besides, this postage stamp was my first excuse to use my bird rubber-stamp that I bought from a local decor-store a few weeks ago :) It is supposed to be a stamp to mark books ("This book belongs to....") but I really liked the bird design, it looks like those made by natives in this region. Very appropiate because this bird ("Chincol") lives in my region too.

This is just a sketch to see gow my finished work should look like. It is made on 90grs. Bond paper from a sketchbook and I used masking tape tomake a frame the size of an ATC to arrange my drawing, the stamping and the postage stamp in actual position. I haven't started the definitive ones because I don't have heavyweight watercolor paper right now :( But I already asked my fiancé to go and buy me some tomorrow while I am on classes.

Remember those ATCs I posted a while ago? Well, my returns from that swap arrived on Friday and I'm very excited! Making ATCs was already a fun thing, but receiving my returns was even better!

For a bigger picture of the ATCs (and the names of the ladies who made them) click on the picture and you'll be taken to my Flickr account, as always :)

OSA swaps are really fun, because with each swap you receive an UM or other kind of goodie and you get to see a lot of new techniques and stamps. Now I think I might need a Gingko leaf stamp, hmm...

I went to check up the OSA Site for more ATC swaps to join but there aren't pretty much left. Then I remembered a site which is entirely dedicated to ATC swapping, and decided to join to give it a try. It is ATCards.com, if you're there, could you please let me know your username? So I'd know I'm not that alone in there (: I've also seen lots of ATCs swaps on SCS but I didn't felt that attracted to them. I mean, I love their resource page and often I browse the forums (but I'm not registered), but I think it's a very large community and it's easier to get lost among so many users.

Besides, I've noticed that those are more like greeting cards in the shape on a ATC, but on other communities (like Nness.org and the ATC Y! group) there's more of a conceptual thing behind each ATC which is what I like to do :) I don't mean that the other style is wrong, it's just that it isn't my thing, lol.

Well, I'll go back to ATCards.com and see if I join a swap or make a trade. Thanks for looking! :)

This is actually an old proyect, but since it's from before I started this blog and I loved how they turned out, (and I don't have anything better to post, lol) I'm gonna talk about this ATCs (:

ATC stand for "Artist Trading Cards" (or Artistic Trading Cards). They're small pieces of art, measuring 2,5"x3,5". I've even heard on mini-ATCs, which are 1.75"x2.5" (for those who really see a challenge in small canvas!). Besides from the size, and that you have to include your contact information on the back of the cards, there are no limitation at what technique to use in them!

I really liked the concept behind ATCs, since they're are supposed to be only traded, and never for sale (I think the cards made for sale are named ACEO). Besides, the small size allowed me to make quite a few without running out of supplies.

This ATCs are for a swap on the Oriental Stamp Art Y! group (if you like to do your artowrk with an asian flair, this is definetely your group!), my first ATC swap actually (and i read today that the returns have been mailed, so exciting!). The theme was Bamboo/Gingko and by that time I wanted to combine my passion for drawing with rubberstamping, and that's where this came up.

There's actually a little history lesson behind this ATC, he he. You'll see, the girl is supposed to be Kaguya Hime (Princess of the Bamboo), which is the main character of a really old japanese novel. It is the story of an old childless bamboo cutter that found a little baby girl inside a shining stalk of bamboo. He named the girl Kaguya and she grew to be the most beautiful woman in the land, even the Emperor wanted her to be his wife, but the girl refused because she had to go back to where she belong, which was the Land of the Moon (you'll see...the girl was an E.T, lol). The emperor was really sad, because he was indeed in love with Kaguya, so he refused to drink a pot of elixir of immortality that she had given to him before going away.

That, in a few words. If you would like to read more about it, there's a better version on Wikipedia.

Now, the "artistic proccess". I first drawed the girl in a piece of scrap paper and copied her in the five white layers, made of watercolor paper. I painted her with very dilluted watercolors and salt and let it dry.

When it was dry, it was time for the rubberstamping <3 I used a stamp that dear Heather Taylor (OSA ladie) gave me when I just entered the group (: Then I applied yellow and light green ink from my Colorbox Petal Point pad and to give it a watercolor efect i sprayed a little water on the stamp. I tamped randomly on the white part of the layer, so it'd look like a bamboo forest.

I cutted the corners by myself with a craft-knife, to resemble a corner paper punch I have seen on the OSA galleries before. But I wasn't going to wait for 3 weeks and spend at least $10 in shipping for 5 simple ATCs, lol. I gotta say that by the 3rd I had regreted my decision, it was way more work that I though! :p Then I added some green thread to the corners (which I had seen on OSA too!)

Finally, I adhered the layer to a black heavy cardstock base and added my contact info on the back. Whow, I had a lot to say about this!

Papers: Black heavy cardstock (misc.), watercolor paper
Inks:  Canary, Lime (ColorBox Petal Point Pinwheel)
Stamps: Bamboo vertical border (ArtNeko)
Other: Multiliner 0.1 black (COPIC), black ink (winsor & newton), watercolors (w&n), green thread (misc.), water, salt.