Three Valentine ATCs

What happens when you hit a dry patch and are having trouble creating art? That's happened to a lot of artists, whether they make their living selling their art, or are just dabblers. I know it will pass, but until it does, it's a real struggle.


My favorite way of working through a dry spell is to organize my studio, my paper, my ephemera, etc. Just touching and seeing stuff often sparks creativity. However, I am in the process of boxing things up in my basement so the contractors have room to put in new walls, so my entire house needs reorganizing and just touching and seeing stuff has a whole different meaning right now. Since I'm a neat freak, I fear this may be part of the problem I'm having creating.

My dear friend Kathy gave me a Hallmark magazine the last time she was in Wichita. I was flipping through it, trying to come up with a viable layout for the Valentine bookmarks for a swap I'm in, when I found an old photo of an entire family. I decided to pull the page out of the magazine and use as many people in the photo as I could in some ATCs. I managed to get three made before I felt like I wasn't doing my best work.
Caroline, the ATC on the left began with a background of an old encyclopedia page, to which I added a heart made from another book page that I'd gessoed and added red paint. The small heart is shrink plastic that I first colored using alcohol inks and a stamped with a scroll type heart stamp. I had originally intended to use the hearts with the bookmarks, but changed my mind.

The middle one, Be My Valentine, started with a page from an encyclopedia over which I glued red tissue I recycled from a Christmas gift. I used another heart cut from the painted paper, a magazine image, and another lady from the photo. The words are in gold leafing, and they are much prettier in person.

Discovery started with a background from a geography book, which I dry brushed gesso over. I cut the heart wings from an encyclopedia page and colored them with green dye ink. Then I added the focal image and the word. Last, I dipped a bamboo skewer into gold paint and added dots around the girl. Feel free to click on the image for a closer view.