Today I’m sharing some silly cacti ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) made with super cool PaperArtsy Infusions. I used Strathmore watercolor paper<\/a><\/span> and brushed on some Liquitex Matte Medium<\/a><\/span> with\u00a0Infusions in The Sage<\/a><\/span>, Lemoncello<\/a><\/span>, and Orange Country<\/a><\/span>. I love the faux wood grain look that comes naturally from Infusions because they include walnut stain crystals with the colored powders.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I also wanted some red to evoke the heat of desert heat and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Ken Oliver Merlot Color Burst<\/a><\/span> I had in my stash blended in nicely (although without the cool wood grain look of the Infusions). I cut some of it down into standard 3.5″ x 2.5″ ATC backgrounds, inking the edges with Versa Fine Black Onyx Ink<\/a><\/span> with a finger dauber<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The rest of the colored watercolor paper was used to stamp out the Carabelle Studio Cactus Stamps<\/a><\/span>, and I used some scraps to create grounding for the images. I stamped the cactus with Momento Tuxedo Black Ink<\/a><\/span>, then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to set the ink (NOTE: when I had tried to fussy cut a cactus before embossing it, the ink smeared even after I had heat set it; I guess the matte medium left the surface non-porous).\u00a0 Then I fussy cut all the images with my Fiskars Spring Loaded Scissors<\/a><\/span> and inked the edges with a black Sharpie marker for a clean finished look.<\/p>\n

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I placed the two smaller cacti in the pot together and doodled speech bubbles for each of them that said, “You Make Me Less Prickly.” and “Ditto.” I painstakingly fussy cut around the spines of the smaller cactus in this duo so that the spines would show even on the cactus behind it. For all the other cactus I either stamped the whole cactus on the background and glued the fussy cut cactus on top of it or I doodled the spines behind the cactus before fully gluing down the cactus on the background.<\/p>\n

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The large Opuntia cactus was so majestic on it’s own that I just doodled a black sign with white letters that said, “Can’t Touch This”.<\/p>\n

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The skinny Saguaro looked like it had arms so I added eyes using a Peachy Keen “In the Garden Face Assortment” face and doodled in a mouth. I also doodled a speech bubble for the cactus that says, “Hug Me!”<\/p>\n

This ATC series was so fun and fast to create. Using the Infusions gave such great color and visual texture, and I saved lots of time not coloring the pot, grounding and each cactus individually. The following is a process video of creating this ATC trio:<\/p>\n

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Disclosure<\/span>: Many of the supplies I\u2019ve used for today\u2019s project are linked.\u00a0Some may be affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I truly appreciate your support toward the costs of running this blog!<\/em><\/p>\n

This ATC series is being entered into the following challenges:
\nWord Art Wednesday Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nCreatalicious Anything Goes with Optional Friends\/Friendship Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nLil Patch of Crafty Friends Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nThrough the Craft Room Door Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nCrafts Galore Encore Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\n613 Avenue Create Anything Goes with Optional Use Vellum Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nCrafty Gals Corner Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nSimon Says Stamp Monday A Trio of Something Challenge<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I’m sharing some silly cacti ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) made with super cool PaperArtsy Infusions. I used Strathmore watercolor paper and brushed on some Liquitex Matte Medium with\u00a0Infusions in The Sage, Lemoncello, and Orange Country. I love the faux wood grain look that comes naturally from Infusions because they include walnut stain crystals with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,13,12],"tags":[31,566,3528,3531,3530,3529,3534,3356,3533,3353,3532],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10939"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10953,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939\/revisions\/10953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}