ATCs Archives | Visible Image

Cheshire Cat Stamp | ATC Swap

Posted on July 13, 2021July 13, 2021 by helen

Good Evening! We are back with some fantastic inspiration from Jane this evening, some fabulous CHESHIRE CAT stamp ATC s [from our Alice in Wonderland collection]…

Hello, it’s time for my latest Visible Image Design Team project. Today I am sharing my latest Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) made for the current July swap over in our Facebook group. If you like trading ATCs I highly recommend you come over and join us as I will be launching the August swap in the next few weeks!

So far 63 Visible Image fans Worldwide have taken part. Some of the design team (including myself) and even Helen and Mark Alexander (Mr and Mrs Visible Image) have also taken part. The theme this month is “feeling hot, hot, hot” so I wanted to see hot colours, perhaps summer but it could even have a flames theme to it. For my own ATCs (the swap is for 1 ATC but I always make 4 as I also keep one, give one to my granddaughter and swap one elsewhere), I decided to use shades of orange and yellow for my hot colours and I thought it fun to make a “hot” Cheshire cat. Yes my imagination really does run wild at times. I also wanted to stamp the words hot, hot, hot as there is a song by that name. Does anyone else remember the 1980s song, “Feeling hot, hot, hot by Arrow? I even listened to it on You Tube as I sat in my studio and made my ATCs!

I worked with these 2 stamp sets:

The Cheshire Cat (I just love this set, he is the most gorgeous Wonderland cat)

and the Alphabetical stamp set (to stamp my words)

To make my “hot” background I got out my mustard seed and crackling campfire distress stains, and my squeezed lemonade oxide sprays, and made this background. I used heavyweight smooth card. Obviously I added some water too and allowed the inks to move and the oxidation to occur.

distress oxide + spray stains background

I then cut four 3 1/2 by 2 1/2″ ATCs from this piece of card.

I like to make all 4 of my ATCs slightly different but staying within a main design.

I stamped the fun fishbone from the The Cheshire Cat set and the word “hot” from Alphabetical using archival inks.

There is also a circle in Alphabetical and I used this as a sun.

I stamped, coloured with Zig pens and cut out 4 Cheshire cats

I then positioned my Cheshire cats and trimmed their tails.

The final touch was some Glossy accents to the eyes and teeth.

These photos above are a little dark as they were taken as I made them in shade of my studio.

So here they are finished and photographed in daylight;

With a close up of each

and one final shot

cheshire cat ATC | visible image stamps

I think Mr Cheshire cat is feeling Hot Hot Hot under all that fur!

These were such fun to make and I am already looking forward to organizing the August swap.

It would be lovely to see you over in the friendly Facebook group. You will see lots of gorgeous makes by the DT and customers to inspire your own creativity. You will also be able to join in with the monthly ATC swap.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Bye for now,

Jane x

We adore these Cheshire Cat stamp ATC s! He looks fabulous in those hot colours! Thank you for your fantastic tutorial Jane ♡

We also want to share with you another fabulous cat themed card by Jane, this time featuring our Curious Cat stamp!

That face and those eyes!!!!

It’s such a great set of stamps for anyone who loves cats!

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Have you been watching our LIVE demos over on our YouTube channel? Our next live demo will be on Thursday at 7pm BST!

We’ll be back here on the blog tomorrow with more gorgeous inspiration!

Hope you have a really nice evening.

Helen & Mark xx

Visible Image | ATC Swaps Tutorial

Posted on June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by helen

Hi there! Thanks for visiting our blog today! Jane is here today to tell you all about the Visible Image ATC Swaps, and for those of you who are new to making Artist Trading Cards Jane has all the details you need…

Hello, it’s time for my latest design team make for Visible Image! Last month I started up an “official” Visible Image Artist trading card (ATC) swap over in the Facebook group. I pair up participants who create an ATC using the theme given, and then post to each other. It was a great success and everyone voted to continue it as a regular event. If you like trading ATCs I highly recommend you come over to the Facebook group! and join us! So far 53 Visible Image fans worldwide have taken part. Some of the Design Team (including myself) also take part.

ATCs | Visible Image stamps

Above is a selection of the ATCs I have made in the past and below is the swap I made for the first “just be you” swap.

I thought today it might be useful for people who have either never heard of ATCs, or don’t know where to start, to show from start to finish my way of making an ATC. This post might also be useful for future reference. Please bear in mind that this is how I personally approach my ATC making, and there are many different ways of doing so.

The theme for the current swap is “here comes summer”. The swap on Facebook is for one ATC but I always chose to make 4 as I keep one, I send one to my 7 year old crafting granddaughter and I swap one elsewhere.

The first thing I did was to choose which stamp sets I wanted to use for the theme. I decided to work with the Summer Wings butterflies

and to add some background interest to my ATCs I also chose to use the gorgeous grunge circles stamp from the Butterfly Effect set.

To make my background I used one of my shaving foam distress re-inker marbled backgrounds. I wanted something really light with lots of white space. There are lots of videos on line if you are not familiar with this really old technique. I first made these with food colouring when I was at primary school! This one was made using Squeezed Lemonade, Salvaged Patina and Kitsch Flamingo re-inkers.

I then cut four 3.5 by 2.5 inch backgrounds from the sheet.

All ATCs need to be this “standard” size.

Many people including me, display them in trading card pockets and if they are not this size they won’t fit.

I stamped the word ‘summer’ from the Summer Wings set using Versafine ink and clear embossed to give a shiny appearance and to add some texture.

ATCs can be created in portrait or landscape form so I decided to make 2 of each. I always like add some background detail so I stamped the grungy circles from the Butterfly Effect set using the new Salvaged Patina distress ink. I love this new colour and yes you can stamp regular distress inks using Visible Image stamps. Their quality is such that the ink does not bead. Regular distress ink give a lovely subtle vintage effect which you can see above. If you stamped in an oxide you would get a much more intense effect but that was not was I was looking for.

Next I got out my bag of inky scraps and chose some pieces which co ordinated with the backgrounds.

I stamped out lots of the 3 sizes of butterflies and cut them out. They are so useful for adding to any project that it’s always a time saver to have some ready to go. I cut off the antennae as I would be re stamping the whole butterfly again on the ATC.

To me what makes an interesting ATC is lots of little details. I often use my sewing machine to sew around the edges but you can also use a “faux” sewing effect with a sewing marking wheel. Just use it against a ruler. I use the metal edge of my ruler.

It leaves holes behind like those from a sewing machine.

You can then use a pen to go over the line and it looks like stitching. Try to not be too neat as it looks much more realistic! I used a gold pen this time but black and silver also looks good.

I added some ink to the edges.

I then played with placement of the butterflies. When designing odd numbers always look better than even, and 3 of something is very pleasing to the eye.

I used 2 large and 1 small for my 3 butterflies. Once I was satisfied with the placement of the butterflies on each card I stamped them in Versafine ink.

I then adhered the butterflies on top.

To give the cards a good thickness of around 300gsm I back mine with the inside of a Weetabix packet. This is really good quality kraft card and free! Just cut it slightly smaller than the ATC and adhere together.

For finishing details I added a Wink of Stella clear glitter pen to parts of the wings and some of the small circles, and then Glossy Accents on top for real sparkle!

The final touch was to add some co ordinating sequins.

So here are the 4 all together as a group..

Summer ATCs | butterfly stamps | visible image | clear | rubber

and individually

This is the one sent to my Visible Image group swap partner

and one final photo with the products used

Visible Image stamps | ATCs | Distress Inks

I hope this tutorial has been useful. If you have never made an ATC do have a go! They are such fun and a great challenge to design in a small scale. You don’t need tiny stamps either…these 5 below were made using the new large A5 Dragonfly Reflection set… I just used parts of the dragonfly with the words.

dragonfly stamp | clear | rubber | ATCs

I do not blog everything I make so if you would like to check me out on instagram @jane.tyrrell then you won’t miss anything.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Thank you so much for your excellent ATC tutorial Jane ♡

We love all of these, so gorgeous and beautiful made!

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You can catch up with them in the videos section and we are live every Tuesday and Thursday at 7pm BST [20:00 Europe | 11:00 PST | 14:00 EST… a little too early for our Australian and rest of the World followers sorry, but we hope you can watch on catch up!].

We hope you will join in with future ATC swaps in our Facebook group!

We’ll be back here on the blog tomorrow with more fabulous inspiration!

Helen & Mark xx

Garden of Tranquility | ATCs

Posted on June 10, 2020June 10, 2020 by helen

Hi there! We hope you are keeping safe and staying well. We have Jane Tyrrell on the blog today with some fabulous inspiration featuring our ‘Random Art’ flower stamps…

Hello! It’s time for my latest design team inspiration for Visible Image.

My garden has been even more important to me this year and the recent landscaping has been a godsend. I have spent many mindful hours outside nurturing my plants and everything is looking so summery now that my summer bedding pots have come into flower.

So all these provided my inspiration for my project today, a set of 5 artist trading cards.
Artist trading cards measure 3 1/2 X 2 1/2″ and I make them to swap with my crafty friends and my little granddaughter.

I called this set my “Garden of tranquility”

I used 2 stamp sets;

Random Art of Kindness

and the daisy stamp from Break Free

This is what I got up to;

I used oxide ink to stamp the background using one of the flowers and archival ink for the “stem” from the ‘Random Art of Kindness’ set.

I stamped the daisy from the ‘Break Free’ stamp set onto some left over alcohol ink yupo and distress inky mop up card and cut them out.

I stamped the “rose” flower from the ‘Random Art of Kindness’ set onto different scraps of inky card and chose the 3 I liked best and cut them out.

I added a little accent of gold stickles to each flower

and I stamped the small words from ‘Random Art of Kindness’ set onto kraft card and cut them into little plant markers.

Here they are finished

with a couple of close ups

and one last shot.

flower stamps | daisy | quirky | ATCs | stamping

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Stay safe and stay creative.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Awesome ATCs Jane! They are so quirky and are making me want to go out in the garden to plant more flowers! The stickles really adds that something special to the flower centres. Gorgeous inspiration… thank you ♡

You will find more of Jane’s inspiring cards and projects over on her blog.

All our social media links:

Shop where you will find all our stamps and stencils
Blog see all our latest posts here
Facebook group show us what you have created with our stamps and stencils
Facebook PAGE give us a like!
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You can also follow us on:
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We will be back soon with more gorgeous DT inspiration.

Pop back later for NEW stamps previews here on the blog too! You may have already spotted some on our social media! 😍

Thanks so much for visiting our blog today.

Stay safe and well.

Helen & Mark xx

Imagine Dream Inspire

Posted on April 2, 2018April 2, 2018 by helen

Hi there! We are back with more gorgeous inspiration this evening. Lynn Good is here with her latest project…

Hi everyone, today I want to share some Artist Trading Cards that I have made for the Visible Image Design Team.

I have made four cards, measuring 2.5 in x 3.5 in.

I began with a piece of watercolour hot pressed paper that is 300 gsm.

I have stuck to three colours of distress inks and have blended them together on the paper

I have then used the same colours through 3 Visible Image stencils – Strobes, Time Tunnel and Fibres

Again using the same colours I have stamped randomly with a mixture of stamps that I have listed and linked to the Visible Image store at the bottom of the blog.

I have then cut the paper into the 2.5 x 3.5 inches and stamped the focal point with black ink and used a sparkle embossing powder over the top.

The big words were stamped with blank ink.

Here are some close ups:

The products that I have used:

Own Kind Of Beautiful

Imagine Dream Inspire

Thanks for stopping by and till next time – Happy Crafting 🙂

These are fantastic Lynn.. loving those backgrounds!
Thank you ♡

You will find more of Lynn’s fabulous projects over on her blog.

All our social media links:
Shop where you will find all our awesome stamps!
Blog see all our latest posts here!
Facebook group join in with the banter and enter our Show & Tell Challenge!
Facebook PAGE …give us a like and enter our weekly giveaways!

You can also follow us on:

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Don’t forget to tag us in your posts!

We will be back soon with a beautiful tag from Veerle.

Thanks for visiting our blog today.

Mark & Helen xx

Shine Bright

Posted on March 23, 2018March 23, 2018 by helen

Good Evening! We are back with our final post today which comes from Pauline Butcher…

Hi there,

Another week has passed and it’s Fabulous Friday once again, so my day to share something I’ve created using some awesome Visible Image Stamps.

I had a Workshop planned for last Sunday, but as we had snow, I decided it was better to cancel it, to keep everyone safe.

Three of the Crafters were all together, so I challenged them to make an ATC (Artist Trading Card, which are 2.5″ x 3.5″ ), to use 3 colours plus Black, 2 stencils, and some Visible Image Stamps, and to also add some dimension.

Their creations were fabulous, but I decided to expand the one I made, into four and mount them, so here is the result…

The stamps I’ve used are…

Glimmer of Light

and Shining Bright

and the stencils I have used are…

Top Left:

Strobes

Stars & Stripes (with paste through),

Top Right:

Time Tunnel (with paste through)

and Geometric Maze

Bottom Left:

Cosmic Skies (with paste through)

and Fibres

and lastly Bottom Right:

Fibres again

and Distorted Chess (with paste through)

I used Distress inks, the images were all stamped onto white card, and heat embossed, and the light bulbs were stamped onto acetate and heat embossed.

I hope you’ll have a go at some ATC’s, they are so addictive to make, and fabulous to get you back into stamping, if you’ve lost your mojo for some reason.

Thank you for popping in.

Hugs, Pauline xxxxx

Wow this is awesome.. what a great way to use your ATC’s Pauline! Thank you for the brilliant inspiration ♡

You will find more of Pauline’s fabulous cards and projects over on her blog.

All our social media links:
Shop where you will find all our awesome stamps!
Blog see all our latest posts here!
Facebook group join in with the banter and enter our Monthly Challenges!
Facebook PAGE …give us a like and enter our weekly giveaways!

You can also follow us on:

instagram
pinterest
twitter

Tag us in your posts!!

Make sure you show us what YOU have created with our stamps/stencils by uploading your photos in our Facebook group! Add them to the ‘Show and Tell’ album for your chance to WIN a £25 coupon!

We will be back this weekend with more gorgeous projects from our amazing team!

Have a great weekend!

Mark & Helen xx

Bold and Beautiful ATCs

Posted on March 18, 2018March 18, 2018 by helen

Hi there! Josefine is here on the blog today with some gorgeous inspiration…

Hello and welcome to a new post for Visible Image. I was in the mood for something bright, something very bright 😉

Because I haven’t used my Distress Oxide in a while, I decided to create a few bright ATCs using them.

I started with a 3 1/2 x 9 inch piece of water color paper and smeared the Oxides directly onto the paper. Then I spritzed water on top, let the inks move and mix and heat set it. Next up, I used the smooshing technique where I put the ink directly onto my craft mat, spritzed some water on top of that and then dragged the paper through the wet ink.

Now I cut up the ATCs to the size 3 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch and started decorating them. The first one with Golden mica flakes through the Stars & Stripes stencil. This had to dry the longest, so I set it aside and continued with the other ATCs.

The second ATC also needed some stencilded background. For this one, I used Cosmic Skies with White Linen Dylusions spray.

I wanted to do something slightly different for the third ATC, so I stamped a few patterns with the Mesh-ellaneous stamp set.

For the focal points I stamped two of the flowers from the Imperfection is Beauty set and my favorite paper boat from Destination Unknown. I just fuzzy cut them and let them white. I thought that this makes it pop even more, rather than any color I could have colored it in. The only “coloring” I did was sprinkling some London Blue and Bubblegum Pink onto one of the flowers and the coordinating ATC.

At the end I adhered everything together and finished it off with a little blending around the borders. Now these are some bright ATCs 🙂

Have you ever created or exchanged some? I like the small size, that you can still do so much with it, but don’t need to find some empty wall space to hang it up afterwards 😉

Supplies Used

Close Ups

Ohhh we are loving these so much!! Brilliant ATCs! Thank you Josefine ♡

You will find more of Josefine’s awesome projects over on her blog.

All our social media links:
Shop where you will find all our awesome stamps!
Blog see all our latest posts here!
Facebook group join in with the banter and enter our ‘Show & Tell’ challenge!
Facebook PAGE …give us a like and enter our weekly giveaways!You can also follow us on:

instagram
pinterest
twitter

Tag us in your posts!!

And make sure you show us what YOU have created with our stamps/stencils by uploading your photos in our Facebook group! Add them to the ‘Show and Tell’ album for your chance to WIN a £25 coupon!

We will be back a little later with a gorgeous layout from Lynn, and something new from Veerle too!

Thanks for visiting our blog today.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Mark & Helen xx

If I Could Turn Back Time

Posted on August 19, 2017August 19, 2017 by helen

Hi! We are back as promised with more awesome inspiration! Veerle Moreels has gone all Halloween…

The weather… you would almost think it’s fall. You might think that’s why I took out the stamps I did but that’s not entirely true. I just thought it was time I took out some stamps I hadn’t used in a long time and I really wanted to a lot of the times ^.^

Now what to create…how about a trio of ATC’s?

I first colored a piece of paper the size of 3 ATC’s and stamped on it. Then I glued down my spider web die cut. When you cut up the paper into 3 ATC’s you have patterns that run from one ATC onto the other.

What stamps are calling out your name for a long time and why aren’t you giving in ^.^

Stamps used:

Brilliant project thank you Veerle… and it will be Halloween before we know it! Loving all that texture ♡

You will find more fantastic projects over on Veerle’s blog.

All our social media links:
Shop where you will find all our awesome stamps!
Blog see all our latest posts here!
Facebook group join in with the banter and enter our challenges!
Facebook PAGE …give us a like and enter our weekly giveaways

You can also follow us on:

instagram
pinterest
twitter

Don’t forget to tag us in your posts!

We’ll be back soon with another fabulous Design Team project!

Thanks for visiting us here today on the Visible Image blog, enjoy the rest of your Saturday.

Mark & Helen xx

Glimmer of Light – Visible Image

Posted on October 17, 2016 by helen

Hello 🙂 Thanks for visiting our blog!

Susanne Rose is here with a fantastic tutorial today…

Hi everyone!

Today I’d like to share some spooky Artist Trading Cards with the awesome Visible Image “Glimmer Of Light” stamp set. I also have the step by step instructions for you:

An ATC is a card that measures 2.5″ by 3.5″. I cut two from a Brusho background.

I used my square mini Gelli Plate to add some texture. I used the mini Honeycomb Delight stencil by STAMPlorations plus “Wedding Cake” paint from Martha Stewart. I stamped the sentiment, which comes with the Visible Image stamp set, randomly on top. Just to create more texture.