Irish ATC

Some things are just serendipitous. St. Patrick's Day is not my holiday, I'm not even a little Irish, and I don't like beer, so it is not the least bit interesting to me, beyond the fact that I can cook corned beef and my family won't gripe at me.

So, today when I went to my friend's house to craft, I wore purple, and grabbed some embroidery floss and a crochet hook to play. Shelly sent me some crochet flowers a few weeks back, and I was eager to try to make a few of my own.

So, I'm ignoring the day, crocheting flowers, and one of my friends laments that she forgot to wear her shamrock pin, which is an annual tradition for her. I looked down at my floss - I had some green, could I convert my flower pattern into a shamrock? To make a long story short, I made shamrocks for each of my friends, and one for myself, too. I don't care a lot about wearing them, but I figured, as long as I had one, I might as well pop it on an ATC.



The colors are all off on this scan. You can't even make out the word Lucky embossed in gold at the top. In real life, the embossing glitters, and it works.

So, I know you are wondering why I needed to make an Irish ATC, so:

Stamp Something - Cream and Green
Fun With ATCs - monochrome
Sisterhood of Crafters - Ireland
Corrosive - Good Luck
Sunflowers and Dragonflies - Irish
The Pixie Cottage - Green
Incy Wincy - Green
Stampin' for the Weekend - Monochromatic

It's pretty easy to do challenges when all the challenge blogs are on the same theme.

Glitter Inchies

You may not be able to tell it from the scan, but these inchies sparkle like Vegas showgirls! I started by stamping with Versamark and heat embossing with clear iridescent embossing powder. I then colored them in with Sakura glitter gel pens. The great thing about the embossing powder is if you get the gel ink on the lines, you can wipe them off, even after the ink is dry, because the embossing is so slick. I'm submitting these to the Saturday Spotlight Slick challenge, The Pollycraft Sparkle challenge, and the Gingersnap Creations Frosting Challenge.

Rabbit inchies

I made these for a Rabbit Inchie mingle, but looking at them, they look more like St. Patrick's day, don't they? I should submit them for the Stamp Something challenge, but there isn't any stamping on them - I drew the rabbits and cut them out, I distressed the patterned paper with ink to heighten the contrast with the rabbits (it was white patterned paper to start), glued on buttons, and then shaded the rabbits with a pencil. No stamping at all. Maybe I should submit my Irish rabbits to the Sunflowers and Dragonflies challenge instead.

Balancing Act

I like this image from Designed2Delight, and I had some fun ideas about what I wanted to do with it, but certain other people beat me to it, and you know how I hate being like other people, so I had to think of something different for mine. I looked through the TJ library of techniques and came across one I hadn't done before - Van Gogh. This image has great bold lines, so it reduces to ATC size, no problem.



I wasn't really liking it, so I added a little stickles, which didn't really improve it, it just made it sparkly. I think I will try this in some other colors, and see if it comes out any better.

Pink, Orange, and Green Inchies

These are not as special as I would have hoped. I created the pink, orange and green backgrounds digitally and printed them out. Then I was stuck trying to figure out how to embellish them. I had a small word handy, so I embossed it on there. Then I tried adding some doodling with my glitter pens, but I have to say, toner resists pens, and the glitter certainly doesn't scan very well. These look tons better in real life.

Rusted

Here are some rusted inchies:



Of course, it isn't real rust. My rust was made with paprika and chili powder and matte medium. It's a whole new level of distressing! I'm not sure who would want one, though. I made them for a swap, and I not sure I would want anyone else's either, if they look like this.

Carbon neutral

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