So one of the most exciting things about my new adventure as a design team member for Oddball Art Stamps is that I get to be a little bit weirder, darker, and frankly grungier than I normally do.  And this is exciting.  Many of my personal art pieces are slightly dark and often weird, and to get to bring that out with this company is exciting.

Don’t get me wrong…I love pretty, bright, bold cards, but it is really fun to do something different every once and a while.

If you haven’t heard, Oddball Art has started an ATC exchange group.  Now ATCs, or Artist Trading Cards, have always been one of those things that make me really uncomfortable.  Don’t ask me why.  I just never was able to make something that I found exciting.  Needles to say, joining in with OBA’s ATC exchange has made me really nervous.  But it has been forever since I have tried an ATC, so I figured it was time to try again.

And I learned something.  I have been over complicating things when it comes to ATCs.  For me, less is more, and simpler is better.

This month’s theme for the ATC exchange is the same as for the monthly card challenge, Creature Feature, so I pulled up some Oddball digis that I thought would be perfect for this theme.

My first ATC features the digital stamp #34 Big Eyed Zombie Sheep, while the second features #233 Big Eyed Baxter.  For both ATCs I followed similar steps, just with different colors.

I started by cutting some 300gram Mixed Media paper in 3″x4″ cards (yes, I went a little bigger, but that is because the math worked better cutting my paper up).  Then using some golden high flow acrylic I dripped the focal color(either Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold or Quinacridone Magenta), white titanium, and titan buff, and blended it together.  Then I added some gelatos and blended those over the acrylics.  Then I added some soft matte gel and some art stones.

To color in the digital stamps, I pulled out my inktense pencils to add touches of color.  I had to add on bits of water, because I was working on an 85lb card stock, not watercolor paper.  But I do think they came out really cute!

Both digis got added to the ATC with the use of gel medium, and then I added a few Tim Holtz stickers under the digis.  I also pulled out some Tim Holtz sentiment stickers and picked what I through was appropriate ones.

I can not wait to get these out in the mail and send them off to who ever is getting them.  Curious to find out more, check out Oddball’s Facebook page, and please join in!  Need to get yourself a new digi for the swap, then use this code DTEK10 for 10% off your entire shopping basket!