The End of an Era - Heritage ATCs

The final theme for my Cricut Message Board ATC (Artist Trading Card) swap group was "Heritage/Ancestors."  Here is the card I made.  The woman in the photo is my maternal grandmother, Cora, when she was 18 years old.

It is bittersweet to see this group coming to an end.  The swap group started back in May of 2008 (here is a LINK to the post with my very first ATC).  For the first round we had ten members - which made it easy to keep the ATCs organized in trading card sleeves by theme.  In the second round the group increased to 14 so we have been at it for two years.  It has been a fun way to experiment and try new techniques.  The best part is that the group is a fun and friendly assortment of crafters.   They all kept up the commitment to get things in on time each month.  Many thanks to Karen (KER) for hosting for two years!  If only my 1,000 Inchie Swap would have a happy ending like this one, sadly all of that work and expense was wasted since we never received anything back from the "hostess" (though what she is going to do with all of the inchies we sent is a mystery).  The moral of the story is to pick your swap group carefully and be prepared to cut your losses if things go wrong!

I used this element on the Heritage cartridge for the front of my cards.  I set the size at 3 1/4 inches to make it a bit smaller than the 3 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch base card for layering.

When set at 3.25 inches tall the width is only 1.836 inches which is out of proportion for the ATC.  I changed the width value to 2.25 in the Shape Properties box to get a perfectly sized layer.

I set up a mat with the adjusted image repeated 12 times (the most that would fit on a 12 x 12 paper).  I had to cut this twice to get enough for 14 ATCs (I cut the entire second mat and saved the extras for other projects).

I did the backs digitally and used an aged looking paper with a delicate "antique" looking font.

Here is my finished group of 14 just before mailing  I punched the photos with a 3/4 inch punch and added the one inch circle in gold cardstock behind each photos.  The edges of the photo and the gold circle were inked to conceal any white edges.  The circle is strategically placed to block out one swirl section.  I flipped the design to give the impression of a heart in the swirls.

I hope you aren't too tired of ATCs - I have one more to share in the next few days and then I will be all caught up for a while. 

PLEASE NOTE:  If you received an "odd" email from me on Wednesday I am sorry - it seems that for about ten minutes my email account went nuts and sent weird messages with odd subjects and links.  I suppose my account was hacked somehow (I was at the movies when this happened).  A friend asked me about the email she received and when I looked into it I found about three dozen of these bizarre messages that I did not send.  Please delete the message without clicking the link in case it is dangerous.  I have changed my email password in hopes that this will take care of the problem.  Why do people do things like this!