<![CDATA[Blue Happiness]]>

Sharing art makes for extra happiness. Especially when the wonderful ARTchix Studio encourages us to “Create Art. Share Happiness” with their blue-themed Artist Trading Card swap. I made three series’ of artist trading cards last month celebrating the color blue with a combination of ARTchix images & goodies and stamps on top of a background made from a larger one-piece layered “masterboard” that I’ll show you in a moment … first, here are the rest of the Blue/Bleu/Bleue cards:

Cuba Blue artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

Bhutan Blue artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

The next three cards included painted blue “doilies” and Endangered Floral vintage postage stamps:

Hawaiian Wild Broadbean Endangered Flora Blue artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

Wallflower Endangered Flora Blue artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

Dunes Evening: Endangered Flora artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

The background “masterboard’ was made on a sheet of 8.5″ x 11” letter-sized paper covered in snippets of recycled printer sheets, paint swatches, wrapping paper scraps, bits of an old calendar page, and colored with various blue “gelato” pigment sticks (smooth color which mixes with water beautifully, in the same way that watercolor crayons do):

beginning of making “Masterboard” to be cut into artist trading card size background pieces

… and another “Masterboard” of blue paper scraps and paint swatches to make the backs of the artist trading cards

artist trading card masterboard background muted with gesso

… and then cut into artist trading card-sized pieces to be adhered as backgrounds onto the eco-artist trading cards (found in ARTchix Studio packaging … or you can make your own out of recycled cardboard!)

another look at the blue backgrounds cut into pieces to give the backgrounds a cohesive look although each piece is unique (this one I made for the backs of the cards)

The Blue Swap asked for six Artist Trading Cards to be sent, but the masterboard cut into nine background pieces and I found so many fun images and ARTchix blue bits to use, so I kept going and created one more series celebrating “Bleu”:

Bleu de Carte artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

Étoile Bleue artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

Bleu L’Aventure artist trading card by Paula Boyd Farrington

“Bleu” series of winged artist trading cards by Paula Boyd Farrington

Thanks to Helga Strauss Stevens of ARTchix Studio for all her cool stuff, and for the idea of making a masterboard (she’s talked about that before in her blog)—and to mixed media artist Nikki Smith for hosting the swap. How wonderful that so much Blue Happiness is winging its way through the post offices to everyone who signed up. I’m sure you’ll be seeing more photos of all the lovely Blue Bleu Bleue artwork on ARTchix’s Facebook page!