Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Sketch and completed ATC with a Christmas theme ( watercolour and ink)  - copyright Wilma Simmons  The current craze of card collecting amongst the youngest members of the family  is the World Explorer cards from  a supermarket giant. I am not promoting this, but  there is little wonder that curious kids would want  to collect this series of cards.  I was thinking about card collecting yesterday, when my doll making group, Gumnut Dollies Newcastle   made some Artist Trading Cards (ATC) for a Christmas swap with a group in Queensland.  If you haven't heard of an ATC before , here is a Wiki explanation: Artist Trading Cards (ATCs)  is a conceptual art project initiated by the Swiss artist  M. Vänçi Stirnemann  in 1997. He called it a  Collaborative Cultural Performance . Artist Trading Cards are  2   1 ⁄ 2  by  3   1 ⁄ 2  inches (64 mm × 89 mm) in size, the same for...

Is too early to think about Christmas ? Not for the Gumnutters Doll group! Last Saturday, our project was to make a "scrappy angel" . Obviously so called, because they are made with scraps of fabric. I made mine 50% of the original pattern size, so they could be little Christmas tree decorations.  I am usually still making Christmas things on Christmas Eve, so it seems rather amazing to me that I have at least two decorations made this early. Thanks to the Gumnutters for motivating me. This week, I was really surprised and delighted to see my Artist Trading Card (ATC)  Doll featured on the homepage of the ATC Doll Group site. I made two ATC dolls as part of a monthly swap which had a theme of Coffee/Tea. ATC dolls are made on a card base, the size of an artist trading card/playing card. Other attachments can be added, but must fold down to the card size.  For my tea ATC doll, I used the tea bag packet from my favourite tea, Lady Grey and created a vintage Lady Grey, ...