'Base' ATC's

These ATC's are all inspired by the word 'Base'. Initially, I found it really difficult to work out what to do. To start with, I found it very difficult working this way, but actually, it was great in that it forced me to think 'out of the box'!

I started by thinking about the word itself - what did 'base' suggest to me? What thoughts did it bring to mind? I thought of 'base' in the sense of a home, or a headquarters, a military base etc, but really didn't feel inclined to work with that. Then I thought of 'base metals', which led me to alchemy, and alchemists trying to turn base metals such as lead into precious metals such as gold. I found an image on the internet, which I downloaded and printed, then embossed with ultra thick embossing powder, which as well as giving a glass-like finish, also enhances the colours in the image. Once this was done, I bent the image so that it cracked and gave a distressed appearance. This was then layered onto a piece of text explaining what alchemy was and a little about what the alchemists hoped to attain.

My next thought was base as in bottom, so that one is fairly obvious, I think! I adore this stamp and was really happy to find a way to use it for this swap. I stamped with timber brown stazon onto a leather textured cream card, which gave a lovely distressed look. I then used chalk inks and applied them with cotton buds to add some colour to the image. Since I photographed the image, I have added a gold highlight to the
ribbon, and the word 'coccyx' across the card.

The inspiration for the final card in this series was a cultural one. Having grown up with American teen movies like Grease, I am very familiar with the expression 'first base', so I used that expression in conjunction with part of a superman comic strip to come up with the final design.

Although I didn't find this an easy series to make, I'm really pleased with the end result, and have definitely learned to think in a different way about words etc.