Gloria J Zucaro's "Merry Christmas ATC's"

Tonight I am sharing my first set of Christmas ATC's for a trade party on Saturday.  I had a lot of fun making these cards.  I used advice from Mary C Nasser's blog post on Oct. 09 when she gave her steps for making her deck of cards for the Inspiration Card Swap hosted by Jessica Brogan.  Starting out with a deck of cards, I glued them to a map.  Then sanded the front of the cards & gessoed & painted the fronts red with Silks Acrylic Glaze and the backs green with the same paint.  I then stenciled the green backs with a second green and outlined the stencils with either red or gold pen.  On the front red side I placed vintage looking stickers or some stocking stickers.  I added torn tissue paper that I had mixed up with gloss medium.  Then coating the tissue with a dark rose Silk paint.  The entire surface was covered with medium and sprinkled with gold beads onto the raised tissue areas.  I stamped on the Doves & Merry Christmas  and added the dimensional snow flakes or Christmas Trees.  The only thing left to do is to add my name and blog information to the back.  I only made a dozen Christmas ATCs, so will use the other cards that are glued to the map and already gessoed for next months trade.   I plan on sending a couple of the cards to blog friends who have been so helpful and generous to me and am looking forward to finding out what our prompt will be for January.  

Our group is hosted by Kimberly Butts who is an avid follower of ATCS FOR ALL and helps organize & attends their convention.  Kimberley's special cards are made of sheet metal in which she presses a design, or her wonderful felted birds.

This is my Paint Party Friday entry for this week.  Please go to the party and visit some of the many artist's sites to see what they have been creating this week.