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.
