Something a little different already

I wasn't going to post these, because they're so far out of my usual style, but I'm sending them out today for an exchange, so they're on my mind. Not to mention, I really like the photography I did on them, and wanted to share.










I created a set of 6 of these (Jack and Queen of Spades; King, Queen, and Jack of Hearts, and King of Diamonds) for an ATC (Artist Trading Card) exchange. The theme is "Reflections and Echoes," and when I was explaining the ATC idea to someone, I mentioned that they were cards "about the size of a playing card." Well, the playing card idea got stuck in my head, so I ran with it and got six decks of cards at the dollar store.




To start, I separated out and sanded the varnish off of all of the face cards. I wanted to make sure that all of my alterations had a good surface to stick to. On the cards I chose as my base cards, I stamped the diamond pattern (from the Pollen Dust stamp set by Fancy Pants) and embossed it with clear embossing powder, then sponged black all over, let it dry, and wiped it off with a damp sponge. I love this emboss resist technique - the ink comes right off the embossed sections and leaves really interesting patterns showing through.




Once I'd gotten my base cards created, I started cutting - I used my Cutter Bee precision-tip scissors (I have 3 or 4 of them - they're my favorite scissors to work with, and the Honey Bees are great for stickers or other tacky stuff) and my Fiskars fingertip craft knife (best invention EVER - so much easier to use than a regular pen-style craft knife) to cut out details from the other five copies of each card. I distressed all of my pieces randomly with black ink, then stuck them together in different layer permutations. I wasn't crazy about the white dimensionals - the white looked weird with all the distressing - so I colored all of the visible edges with a fine-point Sharpie. Easy!