Chickory Coffee

When The Daughter and The Son-In-Law went to New Orleans, they knew the kind of souvenir I'd like brought back for me. This is good coffee! I'm sharing my cuppa with the weekly T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering. A warm welcome waits for you to share a link to your post. Just include a beverage.

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note regarding Jo's Let's Art Journal blog: I've been unable to comment on her blog posts for a while now. I may be caught in a spam filter, or I may be making an error when commenting. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

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I've been continuing my fun times with ATCs. I had Valentine's Day in mind for this one:

The background is red tissue paper. The peach was cut from a magazine ad (where'd I get magazines? Maybe these pictures came from catalogs instead, who knows at this point.). I cut the hearts from a piece of a pink index card, then I put that pretty trim at the bottom.

I made this one just for fun:

It opens, and I've pictured the outside (left, and yes, the outside of the card says, "inside") and the inside (right) above. This is a simple design drawn and colored with Prismacolor colored pencils. I wrote the words with a regular ball point pen. I use blank index cards to make my ATCs, and they are not the smooth surface you might think they are.

This one started out with -you guessed it- a picture from a catalog as the background. I water-colored orange and yellow across the top for a sunny feel.

I glued a piece of an old wash cloth long since relegated to the rag bin to serve as a beach towel, and that colorful bit of paper at the top of the towel is meant to be a sun hat. The shell is from a Florida beach trip from my childhood.

In this one I wanted to try for some white space inspired by the Three Muses Challenge and to make a background without using the catalog photos:

I cut a card from an index card, wet it down, and water-colored a design. Once it was dry, I glued a piece of ribbon across the bottom and sewed on a vintage button from Mother's old button tin. I had trouble with the sewing: if I pulled the thread taut the knot tore through the paper, so the thread is loose where you see it on the button. I think I need more backing than index card if I'm going to do much sewing with these. I edged it on the side with black sharpie marker, but that doesn't show up.

I made this base with papier-mâché, which was fun. I mixed white glue and water together and then let bits from the shredded paper bin sit in the mixture. I spread them thinly over a plain base card.

I added three little bits cut from a cork and sewed the vintage button on through the lace so I wouldn't have to glue the lace. I'm pleased with the background, though it did take some time to dry.

This month's Pick-a-Stick ATC challenge required blending, sand, geometric shapes, and the color Fuchsia. I didn't have any fuchsia at all so looked online for a recipe and blended colors together. I was happy with the color I ended up with, but what's pictured below isn't accurate. I also didn't have sand and used sandpaper instead:

Again to be clear, I realize my ATCs don't qualify under the rules of some/many of the challenges I find online, but since I don't actually link up or enter any of them I feel comfortable claiming them as inspiration. That said, I found inspiration online for the following ATCs:

The Country View February challenge (Black and White Plus One) and Valentine's Day were the inspirations for this:

Everybody Art Challenge has a jeans theme, and I used a jeans photo from a catalog for this:

as I was thinking of the creative artists in the TSFT group who got me interested in ATCs.

Click on the ATC tag for more cards I've shared here.