ATC postcards

I love making postcard collages. First off, it’s a great size for making a collage. Second, a postcard is usually sturdy enough to be a good substrate. Third, it’s so fun to send and receive mail. I’ll say more about that in my next post.

My friend Ronda without an ‘h’ and I came up with a pretty neat way to make and exchange ATC cards by making them as postcards. An ATC is an artist trading card, typically the size of a standard playing card. You make some art on them and then trade with others. Here's what they can look like:

If you place 4 together, you can make a large postcard, which you then send whole, and the recipient can cut them down if they’d like.

Here’s what my friend Ronda sent me:

And here's mine:

And another one:

Here's one I received in a swap:

It’s also possible to do this with small postcards too. The USPS used to issue these small postcards in the past. If you take a playing card and draw an outline on the postcard, you can have 2 ATCs on a single postcard ready for you to mail off.

Here are some of mine:

I love these little guys. They’re so cute! Thus far, I’ve been loath to cut them down. I like them as they are.

One thing about making them, I don't use a varnish over the top. I glue down the pieces with UHU glue stick, and then sometimes I color them with gelatos or watercolor crayons.

What do you think? Wouldn’t these be fun to make and trade?