Quick Look: Dimensional Sparkly Goddess ATC

Greetings fellow Musers upon life and art! Today I bring you a quick look at a recent artist trading card made with a technique I like to use when I want to add strong dimension to a piece.

Here is an ATC I made on a mixed-media background of watercolor, spray ink, and rubber stamping. (The teeny writing is from Misc. ATC Set 3 from Lost Coast Designs; the goddess figure is from the same company's Fortune Women Set.)

(Incidentally, this card is being featured over at the Lost Coast Portal to Creativity in this month's ATC Challenge contest...head over for your chance to win a gift certificate to LCD's amazing stamp store!)

So...after stamping this goddess figure, washing her with sheer watercolor, and accenting her with metallic gel pens, I cut her out and experimented with placing her on the card. Even though I liked the mixed-media background, the composition looked a little flat, no matter where I placed her. I didn't really want to add any other images, but the card needed something...so I pulled out this trusty technique.

"I wanted it to look like she was standing in a puddle of magic"

It involves sprinkling a bunch of different embossing powders and glitters on your card and heating them from underneath (they aren't "fixed" on the card with embossing ink, so they will just blow away if you apply your heat tool from above). They melt and swirl into a really interesting puddle that has all sorts of glimmer, sparkle, and chunky bits, depending on what you add.

This card has some fine embossing powder, some "antique" EP with larger particles of gold, two different colors and sizes of purple glitter, and some large matte purple mica flakes to make the texture even more interesting. Use several different things you have on hand for the most interesting effect.

After I melted them all around, I had a little place for the goddess to stand. I wanted it to look like she was standing in a puddle of magic.  :)  (At this point, I decided I did need to use another design element to balance the card, so I rubbed on a foil fleur-de-lis, added a little more embossing powder mix in the upper left corner, bordered the whole shebang in oil pastel, and pronounced the ATC finished.)

Here is another shot of the card at a weird angle so you can see just how much depth and dimension this technique can achieve. Compare with the above photos to see how different parts shimmer and glitter depending on how the light hits it. (Why, yes, that is my disembodied thumb.)

Please let me know if I can answer any questions about this technique for you, or leave me some love in the comments below. :)

I remain, Musers, very truly yours,