Who Knew?? Probably every artist but me! 😂 Certainly I had seen a lot of artists making very small art, but what I saw was usually for sale. I wondered who bought very tiny art, I mean like 2.5x3.5 size... or sometimes slightly larger. There is a lot of it going on and a time or two in art places, I nicely question what folks did with tiny art. I meant, what did they do with it when they bought it and brought it home! I never really had anybody give much of a valid answer. I just wanted to understand.
A week ago or about, I was on Etsy and although I've vowed I wasn't going to buy any tiny art, because I don't know what to do with it, I saw a piece of tiny wonky art (although it probably has a name, it didn't call it a trading card)....and I chose to buy it for $6.00 to randomly support an artist I didn't know. While on her Esty page, I saw a post that for $1.00, the artist would send you a tiny piece of art, ATC, Artist trading card. She would include a self addressed, STAMPED envelope for you to send her one back. Jeepers! ...but, it sounded fun, so when I ordered this below tiny wonky art, I spent one more dollar to play the game!
This is the one I bought. I don't know what made me do it, except to support the artist. I did kind of like the little box with the hook for the closure and the little person sitting in it and the starry sky. I see lots of artists that do styles like this, but I never had.
So! Within a week, here came my funky little piece and the promised trading card.
The envelope had funky art on it too, a woman, standing in a field with a rabbit hopping by, obscuring her face. LOL! Even the stamp was artsy.
Inside was my purchase and the Trading card, both of which were the same size. This artist had her stuff together on it.
The little art piece I bought came in it's own handmade art pocket. You can see that it is machine sewn and the top of my tiny art piece was sticking up out of the top of the pocket. She has very small pieces of tape holding everything together perfectly
....and if you weren't sure already, on the back of it, it says "handmade with love and gratitude in Vermont. be well" and it was initialed.
This was my surprise design trading card. It kind of looks like the Queen to me, wearing a basket of flowers on her head. Maybe not the Queen, but the bottom of the basket somewhat looked like a crown, so that is what it reminded me of.
The deal then was, for me to send a tiny piece of art back and as I said above, she provided a self-addressed, stamped return envelope, she also provided a small playing card to use to make the art! She couldn't have made it easier and I am just sure, that even the trading part of this deal, envelope, stamp, tiny art and card..... I would be surprised if the dollar I paid even covered it. I mean, I understand a trade... but still.
Since the cards should somehow represent the artist that makes it, I decided to put one of my previously made tiny collages on the card. I put a piece of painty paper on the background to cover the card so that design on the card would not show and then I attached my little collage too it. I liked how it turned out, since this is the type of thing I make at the moment. I wondered what I was going to do with some of the tiny collages I had made and it really came in handy for this. I also used the corner punch I showed in my last post to make it look neater.
Even though I was happy with what I was sending back, something in me wanted to try the wonky style and if I came up with something, I would send it back too, so I used one of the small cards I already had here and used some images from some of my book treasures I have acquired this past week and came up with this. It was fun and I thought I did good for my first try.
A lot of collage artists use various magazine images and the such in their collaging, but I never have really. I think early on I tried a piece or two, but I didn't like how the magazine paper reacted to being dampened and at least what I tried, didn't look good at all, so since I really had so much to learn that didn't include it, I let that go for the time being. I did choose to use a glue stick this time instead of liquid adhesive like I usually do and that is probably one of the biggest answers to the photo paper. The book pages I cut these from were thicker than magazine paper too, so they did much better.
These will be what I will send back. I expect to get them ready to go out this evening and get them in the mail on the way too or back home from Moms tomorrow.
After I put in the initial order, I read a little about artist trading cards and what some folks do with them and it seems some people are really into it. I don't know that I will try to get that involved in it for myself, but time will tell I suppose. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again, because it was fun to do. I just don't have plans to make it a big thing. You never know though.
My Saturday has been very productive. I slept in like always because I stayed up half the night, thought I wasn't going out, but then I did first thing, back to the Hospice store for a couple of things I regretted not taking with me last time, through the Starbucks that is really close to that store, for a Cafe Mocha with extra expresso and a breakfast sandwich... 😲 ...then on to the Dollar Tree to pick up a couple of things to try that I saw some other youtuber show that she got there, then back home. Unloaded my treasures from the car, loaded the car back up with trash and recycle and took those to the bins. Got the mail from across the street because another piece of art I bought was in there (not teenie tiny this time)....came in, threw it all down, put in some clothes to wash, loaded the dishwasher and turned it on, then reheated what was left of my breakfast sandwich and Starbucks coffee, sat down and put my feet up!
Since then I have done a few more things around here, including moving some stuff from my back porch, because it is not in good shape and is going to be replaced at some point. Lots of stuff on it, so I will move a bit each day or so. Always something more to do, right?
