March ATCs

March 28th was the date of our most recent ATC trading day. There was a huge turnout, so I'm glad I made a lot of cards. Here is a sample page from my first series.

I titled my cards "Batik" because I used the classic color resist method. All of my cards were made with beeswax on card stock, but I used 3 different methods. For my first series, I painted designs with a #6 brush loaded with melted beeswax and I also made some finer lines with Windsor & Newton masking fluid on the ivory card. Then I covered the marks with a layer of "Arylide Yellow" liquid acrylic by Tri-Art. Step two was to make more marks with the beeswax and cover them with a layer of "Alisarin Crimson": these two layers created the brick red color. The third layer of marks was covered with "Indigo" acrylic paint. When I went to iron away the beeswax, some of the paint that had stuck to the wax melted down into the card and created the unusual spots.

My next series was made with an Indonsian Tjintang tool. The beeswax is poured into a little brass cup with a tiny spout that is attached to a wooden handle. I held the Tjintang over a candle to melt the wax and the wax flowed out onto the card stock. Careful! If the wax gets too hot it gushes out and if it's not hot enough, the spout is blocked. For this series I used watercolors: Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red and Prussian Blue.

The third series was done with the Tjanting and liquid acrylic paint. I thought it was the least successful but they turned out to be the favorites at the trade.