TEACHING PAPER CRAFTING IN CALIFORNIA

Hello everyone!  

Recently, I was blessed to have been able to share my love of ATCs with lots of lovely ladies in southern California at the St. Regis Resort at Monarch Beach, located in the Laguna Nigel area.  My husband is currently the President of AMCA, or Air Movement and Control Association.  It is an international association and we were hosting the annual meeting at the St. Regis.  

The association asked if I would share some of my paper crafting knowledge with a large group of ladies who would be attending the annual meeting.  I was so honored and thrilled to do this!  There were approximately 40 ladies in the class and we had a complete blast learning some of the basics of not only ATCs but paper crafting in general.  I would say that only a few of them had ever done any type of paper crafting before.

Here are some of the beautiful ladies that stayed way longer than the scheduled class time to create not only the cards I'd kitted to do together but also create some of their own unique and absolutely beautiful ATCs.  The class was scheduled from 9 - 11am.  But, we had use of the room all day, if we wanted it.  Long story short, the class finally ended up stopping at 4:30 that afternoon!  We had a complete blast laughing, crafting and gettting to know each other better.  They were from all over; Canada, Britain, Singapore, Spain and the US. 


I created three cards for us to make together and put together kits of all of the items and all of the supplies that they would need for the class.  Then I provided them with lots of additional vintage images, all sorts of Dresden and lace trims, and a lot of different papers so that they could create their own original little works of art.

Here are the cards that I created ahead of time and kitted up for everyone to make together:

We did this little sweetheart first.  

Then we moved right on into "steampunk".  I had embossed and colorized all of the metallic background with black paint ahead of time.  But, I let them use paint dabbers and their fingers to create the patina and metallic look of the gold and juniper in the background.  The ladies LOVED working with the paint to see what a difference just a swipe or two makes.  I also showed them how to colorize a black and white photograph with Distress Inks and a Nib.  So easy and such cool results!

Finally, since it's so close to Halloween, we graduated into this really fun vintage steampunk style Halloween ATC.  A little Gold paint dabber lightly brushed along the edges can really create some cool contrast in a background.  I found most of these images online and just sized them to fit my ATC.  But the really cute little vintage skeleton clown is from an Alpha Stamps collage sheet.

Such a fun group of ladies...so eager to learn about paper crafting.

They were all a "quick study" and mastered the techniques I showed them in no time.

These ladies are adding paint "patina" to the background of their vintage steampunk 
hot air balloon ATC.  I was told that paper crafting was just now really becoming popular in Singapore but the supplies are very expensive there.

My dear friend from Chicago, Sally loved making ATCs.  Even cutting out the tiny little images didn't bother her!

I wish I had photographs of their original art work.  They were all so different and masterfully done!  They truly inspired me with their enthusiasm and their creativity.  To see all of the ladies having such a good time and creating things that they never thought possible was such a joy for me!

I hope you're making time for yourself today to play!  It's SOUL FOOD!