Decades ATCs

I participated in another ATC swap this month and the theme was "Decades." I made a "Sixties" ATC recently (here is a LINK to the 60's ATC post), so, at first, my thoughts went to the more recent decades. When I thought about it some more, I decided I wanted to go back in time to the first decades of the twentieth century and I started to look for some suitable images.

I did a Google images search and found a few interesting twenties/thirties images...



This is a Life magazine cover.



Here are a few fashion images. I wasn't sure about the size and quality of these images for making a good ATC. Then I remembered my Dover samples. Dover Publications publishes great books of clip art and you can sign up to receive free samples of their images.



I looked through my file and found these sheet music images. I particularly liked the one on the right with such strong Art Deco lines so I chose that for my ATC. Here is a LINK to the sign up page where you can register to receive the Dover samples by email each week.



I worked with the image to size it appropriately for the ATC and printed the images at highest quality on matte photo paper. I set the images up with a black inner border and then an outer border in the reddish orange color, but I must have made an error in my printing settings and the sizing turned out a bit off. In the end I decided that I liked the look of the black border and went ahead and trimmed and mounted the image on black cardstock cut to ATC size (2.5 x 3.5 inches).



The image was quite striking and I decided that minimal embellishing was called for. I wanted to emphasize the glamour of this image and I decided to add "diamonds" in a pattern around the center diamond shape of the image. I also added one diamond in each corner.



I can't really capture the sparkle in the photograph, but the gems add a simple and effective "finishing touch." I had some other ideas for embellishing but once I added the gems I was happy with the look and decided to leave well enough alone!



There were only six participating in this swap which made it relatively quick and easy to get the cards done. I photographed the cards on an orange background, slightly separated in a grid.



I realized that if I put them in the same pattern, but touching each other, an even stronger pattern was formed. I want to work with this pattern for some design studio files - I will try to get to them soon.

I did a bit of research and found out that "Hello Beautiful" was written by Walter Donaldson and published in 1931. Walter Donaldson wrote many hit songs including "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby," "My Blue Heaven," "Makin' Whoopee," and "Carolina in the Morning."