To honor Our Lady during her month of May we will once again be hosting an Artist Trading Card swap of Marian artwork.
Artist Trading Cards are tiny pieces of original artwork created for the purpose of trading with others.
This will be the second Marian ATC swap - last May 575 Marian cards were traded. We also hosted an All Saints Swap in the fall which had even more participants. You can see some of the 1,460 saint cards traded here. You can also see some of last May's Marian cards here.
An ATC is precisely 2.5" x 3.5" (6.35 x 8.89 cm) in size - you can buy ready made cards at a craft or art supply store or cut your own from larger pieces of paper. Something like card stock or heavy watercolor paper is good. We usually cut ours from watercolor paper - a 9x12" sheet will give you ten cards.
Their small size makes them fun and non-intimidating to work with.
Artwork can be of any media or combination thereof -watercolors, acrylics, pen and ink, colored pencil, calligraphy, whatever.
The purpose of the swap is to share and encourage love of Our Lady, so all of the cards should reflect a Marian theme. Some suggestions to consider for inspiration: titles of Our Lady, mysteries of the rosary, apparitions, hymns, prayers, antiphons, symbols, traditional images or paintings. The possibilities are as limitless as Our Lady herself.
watercolor by Mary Rose, age 9
Once again, we welcome participants of all ages in the swap, but each should be encouraged to do his or her best for Blessed Mother. In the previous swaps we've had the littlest budding artists all the way through to teens and adults. We've had many mothers participate and I am always happy to see other busy moms taking time for their own creative endeavors and to see their individuality reflected in their artwork. Some ladies expressed their artistic talent drawing or painting while others demonstrated their creativity through various scrapboook and papercrafting techniques. Anyone who would like to honor Our Lady through artwork is invited to join!
Blessed Mother by Kateri, age 4
The swap will work the same as the previous ones. Here are the details:
- Each participant will create five ATC's to mail out and will receive five different cards in return.
- Everyone will send their cards to me. We will sort them out roughly by age group of the creator and then mail the cards back out to their new recipients. When you mail your cards to me, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope that I can use to send your new cards to you.
- International swappers are most welcome! It's always extra fun to receive cards from a far away place.
- The swap is open to all ages.
- Each card should be labeled on the back with the creator's name and however much info you'd like to share - age (for the kids), date, title of the piece, media used and location if you like. Last time some participants were looking to connect with others for possible pen pals and the like, so you are welcome to include more personal info if you want, but it is not required.
- If you are interested in participating please leave a comment or send me an email at kimberlee (at) beadsofmercy (dot) com, and put ATC swap in the subject, and I will send you further details. Anyone can join in and definitely the more the merrier.
- Please mail your cards to me postmarked by Saturday, May 28th.
- If you have a blog, please feel free to spread the word. Here is a button you can post (thanks Lydia):
Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you! Have fun and Ave Maria!
Edited to add: Trading ATC''s makes a wonderful project for a class or group, but may I suggest classes swap amongst the members rather than sending the cards to me. I aim to have each artist receive cards from five different people. I learned in the last swap that if I have classes participating it can be impossible to do the trading so that people get cards back from five people who are not in their own class, so I recommend you just swap within the class rather than going through the trouble of mailing them. Thank you for your understanding.
Great! Another ATC swap! The All Saints one was great.
Posted by: mariah | May 09, 2011 at 08:24 AM
count us in! i will be sure to get started early. :)
JOYfilledfamily{at}gmail{dot}com
Posted by: lena | May 09, 2011 at 08:31 AM
Hooray! We plan on participating again this year, Kimberlee. I Thank you and your dear family for hosting this again and for all of your love and devotion to Our Lady and the Saints. May God bless you for it.
Posted by: Kelly | May 09, 2011 at 09:29 AM
We will be joining you as well!
Posted by: Roxaline | May 09, 2011 at 09:53 AM
We would love to participate! This will be our first time and we can't wait. God Bless you and your sweet family for doing this.
Laurie ..Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Posted by: laurie norman | May 09, 2011 at 02:23 PM
YAY! I LOVE these! I was thinking about emailing you to ask if you were hosting again this year. :-) I'm going to spread the word on my blog tomorrow. Thanks for doing doing this again!
Posted by: Lacy | May 09, 2011 at 05:08 PM
Una and I have been waiting for the next ATC Swap! We are definitely in!
Posted by: Nadja | May 10, 2011 at 07:12 AM
I'm sorry we missed this last year, but we'd love to participate this time.
Posted by: Ruth | May 10, 2011 at 08:47 AM
My kids would love to participate! And maybe me too ;)
Blair in Texas
blairandsteven AT yahoo DOT com
Posted by: Blair | May 10, 2011 at 12:54 PM
Hi, we would like to do this again!! WE enjoyed the Saints cards soo much so can't wait to do this now.
Posted by: Dessi | May 10, 2011 at 01:05 PM
We are going to do our best with this being our first year. My oldest that will participate are three and four, so hope that is not too young. Thank you.
Posted by: Robina | May 10, 2011 at 01:41 PM
I would love to link to you on my blog, but since we didn't participate last year, I ahve no pictures of cards of my own children to show as an explanation. Is there an image you can give me permission to use to show in the link over to your blog. Thank you.
Posted by: Robina | May 10, 2011 at 01:48 PM
We would love to join the swap, once again! Thank you Kimberlee!
Posted by: Jessica | May 10, 2011 at 02:18 PM
We'd love to participate! Please send more info. My 12 year old pointed at your note, "the more the merrier" and said, "it should say,'the more the MARYer'!"
Thanks!
Posted by: Lisa Novack | May 10, 2011 at 02:52 PM
I would like to participate too!
Posted by: Mary | May 10, 2011 at 03:20 PM
We will be participating too!
Posted by: Mary Ann | May 10, 2011 at 03:47 PM
We want to participate again!
Posted by: Jordana | May 10, 2011 at 03:50 PM
My daughter and I would like to participate. Sounds like fun. I love trading.
Posted by: Cris | May 10, 2011 at 09:07 PM
My boys would love to participate! This is our first ATC swap, we are very excited.
Thank you for hosting.
Robyn in AR
Posted by: Robyn Costello | May 11, 2011 at 11:49 AM
We would like to joint this time around. Thank you, Kimberlee and children for doing this fun event.
Martha, Alana and Alicia
Posted by: Martha in SD | May 11, 2011 at 09:45 PM
HI! Thank you for doing this - we love doing ATC's! Grace and Amy will participate and send you our ATC's by 5/28! Blessings, to you and thank you!
Posted by: Grace Sammoury | May 12, 2011 at 12:09 PM
We would like to join!!
Posted by: Vallimasoos | May 14, 2011 at 12:38 PM
A wonderful way to honor our Lady through our children's eyes.
Posted by: paula | May 14, 2011 at 11:19 PM
I'd love to participate! I'm not sure, though, that I'll have time to finish, so I'll wait to sign up until I see if I get any cards done. Now if I could just find my sketchbook. I know I left it right here somewhere.
Posted by: fieldsparrow | May 16, 2011 at 08:19 PM
I'll participate!
Posted by: justamouse | May 17, 2011 at 01:25 AM
The Bayley clan is in!! Thanks Kimberlee!
Posted by: Kelly B. | May 17, 2011 at 02:09 PM
I teach art to a group of Catholic homeschool students in my area. We've done ATCs together for several years now. I am going to tell my students about your Marian swap and see if they will join in. My month is very busy but I hope to find time to make a set before the deadline.
Have a blessed and beautiful May!
Mina Milburn
Posted by: Mina Milburn | May 17, 2011 at 04:21 PM
Three or four of my kids would like to participate! Thanks so much!!!This is a wonderful idea!
Posted by: Jennifer | May 18, 2011 at 07:19 PM
We would love to participate! Thanks for hosting this wonderful event again! Blessings to you and your family!
Posted by: Holly@ThreeSidedWheel | May 18, 2011 at 09:52 PM
We would love to participate. Thank you for doing this!
Posted by: Stephanie | May 20, 2011 at 07:07 AM
We would love to participate, and this will be our first time! We were introduced to this art form at a Little Flowers meeting and thought it was great fun! Looking forward to more information...
Posted by: Deidre | May 21, 2011 at 12:15 AM
What a great idea! My little boy thinks it will be very exciting to receive cards from the other side of the world! Please count us in.
Posted by: Kee | May 21, 2011 at 05:43 PM
My girls received their cards today!! Thank you so much!!
Here are the cards they received:
http://faithandfamilyconnections.blogspot.com/2011/06/marian-artist-trading-card-swap.html
Posted by: Jennifer | June 10, 2011 at 04:29 PM
This is a lovely idea for our community. We could not only do this for Marian devotees but for our other patron saints as well. Thank you!
Posted by: Lady.Rosary | June 15, 2011 at 03:15 AM