Nature's Beauty - an ATC swap

One of the blogs that I really enjoy following is that of Diana over at The Velvet Moth. Diana makes the most exquisite pieces of art, often incorporating textiles and beads and of course often velvet!!! A while back Diana put out a call for anyone interested in doing an ATC swap. I was rather behind everyone else by the time I replied, but Diana and I did make contact and agreed we would do a one to one swap.

I have had a very busy time over the last few months with family commitments taking up a lot of time and although I have been doing various knitting and crochet projects, plus had a much needed and special holiday, apart from some essential card making, I have not been keeping up with my papercrafting and mixed media projects. So making contact with Diana and agreeing to do this swap, gave me a much needed incentive to get myself organised and plan something a bit more creative and demanding on my creativity.

Diana was ahead of me and her beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, decorated box and tag arrived while my project was still pretty much in the planning stages!  Diana's project incorporates die cuts, lace, velvet, beads, gold embossing and script. For more information about Diana's design pop over to her blog where she has also posted about our swap.

Not surprisingly, I had also planned a nature themed project as the natural world provides a great deal of inspiration to both of us. The title for my project - Nature's Beauty only came when I was nearing completion of the project.

My first step was to take a sheet of A4 white card and cover it with my leafy background technique (see my labels on the right for other posts about how I do this), using Distress Inks. I cut out the ATC panel and I then added stamping with the little ferns with first and second generation stamping and a little stencilling, before adding the heat embossed tree die cuts and the little ferny butterfly which must be one of my most used stamps. I shaded the edge of the panel to give a glowing light to the centre, as I wanted it to look like a woodland glade. The final touch was the word "Beauty".

Diana had made a lovely little box to hold her ATC so I thought about what I could do as an alternative.

I used the beautiful Crealie labels dies that I had a feeling Diana would like and cut two out of the leafy backgrounds and two out of toning green card for the insides. I stuck them together back to back and joined them at the bottom.

These are decorated again with die cuts decorated with Treasure Gold gilding wax, some tiny micro beads on the hollyhock flowers and butterflies stamped with the script stamp in the beautiful Delicata Gold ink which I had never heard of until another of my special crafty friends gifted it to me. The insides are stamped with dye inks. I made a matching small tag and finished that off with some leafy ribbon that has been in my stash almost since I started crafting, so it was nice to find a use for it.

To hold the ATC, I wanted something to hold it in place vertically so had a play with some scrap card and managed a little paper engineering to invent what I needed!

I absolutely loved doing this swap with someone so talented who likes the same sorts of motifs and themes as I do. I have been struggling to get inspired and motivated and working on this little miniature gift has got me kickstarted again I think, so thank you Diana and for the beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, box and tag you sent to me!

My project used the following supplies:
Dies - Impression Obsession - Hollyhock; Craft Emotions Hogweed; Tim Holtz - Wildflowers; Memory Box - Darla Butterfly; Sizzix Framelits Tags Rounded; Taylored Expressions - Birch Trees; Crealies Extreme Labels; Stampin Up butterfly punches; Tim Holtz Bigz tag die

Stamps - Inkadinkado - Meadow; Darkroom Door - Artist; Crafty Individuals - CI207/231/021; Woodware script; Chocolate Baroque - Poppy Meadow

Inks and sundries - Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Peeled Paint, Squeezed Lemonade & Twisted Citron; Stampin Up dye inks - Crumb Cake & Chocolate Chip; Ranger Archival Olive; Delicata Gold & Versamark. Treasure Gold in Florentine Gold, Oxynite and Green Amber. Embossing Powder in Copper and Gold. Dark Green micro beads.