Recycle Materials Artist Trading Cards

I just got back from spending a few hours with my artsy friends.  These ladies are very talented and today have come up with more ideas than I can conjure up myself.  Today's theme was "recycle" and we were to make Artist Trading Cards (ATC) with mostly recycled things to swap with each other.  Artist Trading Cards are made by artist to trade with other artists.  The concept is similar to trading baseball cards, in fact, they're the same size.  

This card is a Crafty Chica Product Line

It's not just fun and games, though.  Today we had a serious conversation about what exactly were we, as a group.

Are we just random innocent ladies who love to craft, hot glue gun in one hand a brush in the other?  

Are we a group of artists who are addicted to paper crafting? 

OR

are we, gulp......A CULT! ....GULP!....

Well, thankfully, we all agreed that we do exhibit signs of addiction....'com on, I KNOW you have skeletons in your closet too, in my case, it happens to be paper in my closet.....tons and tons of paper, hahaha, but we are in no way......a cult!

Well, now that I know I'm not in a cult, I can go on with my blogging, whew! 

The first ATC card is a technique that Ally Sanchez taught us.  You take a paper bag, crimple it up and use shoe polish (the paste) to rub on the paper, fun and easy.

 Next is Pat Esteves, she used the packaging of something she purchased. It's a thick clear plastic packaging.
She embossed a Hello Kitty and added some glitter and a paper flower.  To make the flower, she cut the paper in a spiral and rolled it up. 

next, is from Florentina Rivas, Tina.  She used corrugated paper from packaging, the stem was made from the wire wrapping of a bottle of wine....niiiiiiice.  She used recycled paper for the flower using Tim Holtz, Tattered Flower die, you can find it here.  She used Gold Glimmer Mist, you can find that here.  

 next is Carmen Mazzola.  She used various packaging materials, including bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard, tissue, twigs, pine cone ends and various shells. 

The next one is from Kim Lamos.  She used a Pepsi can to make the bottom of the cup cake.  The top of the cupcake.....you're not gonna believe this.....she used paper made out of elephant dung!!! oh yes my friends, this takes the prize as far as recycled materials.  I tried to scratch and sniff but, trust me, it does not smell...at all!  you can read more about this paper here.

The next one is from Virginia Binion, Jinnie, a pretty little flower made out of a recycled book and tinted with a brown ink pad.  Love the color combination on this one.

The next one is from Cheryl Shoats, she used a soda can to cut the Tattered Flower from the same die as Tina above.  She used butterfly die cuts embossed to give them texture.  I loved that she used the colors of the soda can and incorporated it in her design.

next is Rose Rodriguez.  She used bubble wrap...genious! to mimic the bubbles under water.  She used little die cuts for creatures under the sea.  The red netting is from a bag of oranges...cool! the algae was cut from a green plastic bag.

Lastly, this is the card I made to trade with the ladies.  I used a cereal card board box as my base.  For the background, I used pages of an old book.  I used the inside bag of a POP's cereal to cut the cage using Tim Holtz die, find it here. I strung a lace ribbon through a soda pop cap.  The metal heart is a small paper clip bent forwards to create a heart.  The butterfly was made using a recycled take-out plastic container.  To get step by step instructions on how to use this plastic, go here.   I used blue ink around the edges for dimension.

And that wraps up our group's recycled ATC cards.  I sure got a ton of ideas from these ladies, I hope you did too.  If you would like further instructions on a technique discussed here, please send me an email (see my profile) and I'd be more than happy to go over it with you. 

Have an awesome day tomorrow, thanks for coming by!