Even more ATCs

I have lots of bright cardstock and cutesy papers from when I scrapbooked a few years ago. I worked really bold and bright when I scrapbooked but I seem to use softer colors on my ATCs. So I'll have to see if I can break out of this mold! Anyway, I finally got the Vintage Sewing Artist Trading Cards finished up today. I made 9 of them so I should get 9 back. That should be fun! I found some images of vintage trade cards that I used for some of them. Here's the two I made today.

This one is pretty plain but it's really pretty in person. It has a trade card for the White sewing machine company. In case you're wondering what a trade card is ...

Over a century ago, during the Victorian era, one of the favorite pastimes was collecting small, illustrated advertising cards that we now call trade cards. These trade cards evolved from cards of the late 1700s used by tradesmen to advertise their services. It wasn't until the spread of color lithography in the 1870s that trade cards became plentiful. By the 1880s, trade cards had become a major way of advertising America's products and services, and a trip to the store usually brought back some of these attractive, brightly-colored cards to be pasted into a scrapbook. Some of the products most heavily advertised by trade cards were in the categories of: medicine, food, tobacco, clothing, household, sewing, stoves, and farm. (Ben Crane, www.seedsofknowledge.com)

So now you know what a trade card is. Both of these cards have one. This card has some great background paper that looks like old wallpaper, some lace and ribbon. I got the paper as a gift but I imagine if you got to a scrapbooking store (instead of the hobby store) you could find these - you can find papers that are a heavier stock than what's normally at the hobby shop. I have some Steam-a-Seam that is 1/4" wide and it worked a treat for attaching the ribbon. Way less messy than glue.

Next, is a Singer card. I tried to put more elements on this one. I used the same 'wallpaper' plus some of the 7 Gypies tape measure paper. The Singer logo looks a bit blurry because it lost some resolution when I made the illustration bigger. Let's just call it a dreamy glow! The trade card says "Tired and Nervous? No need for it" .. yep, advertising never changes, buy a better machine and you won't be frustrated! Now don't get upset that I have a little metal tag that says 'wife', I'm sure it was politically correct back then, LOL. I had thought of putting a button there but even though I have tons of buttons none looked quite right.

So that's today's productivity. I think we should have a contest to see who can guess when the next time I work on a D*O*L*L* will be !