What is Art 4x6 Swap Piece

Arty Goodness in the Mail

Everyday Adventures

I’ve just made it home from a fabulous time at Ancient City Con. We’ll resume our basket-weaving next week, but for this week I want to share about another fun project with the Gauche Alchemy girls!

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After several of the Alchemists participated in Art House Co-Ops 4×6 Exchange, they decided they had so much fun they wanted to do it again! This time we signed up for our own version of the swap using Swap-Bot to handle the random matching of partners, and we each got to make, send, and receive a fun little piece of art.

Rose Colored Glasses 4x6 Swap piece

Mine was inspired by a window pane-style stamp that I’d embossed in white and used a watercolor resist technique to color.  Then I went through a couple of magazines I had lying around to find the words to my phrase: When you look out the window onto the world, do you see the possibility? The backgrounds also came from ads in the magazines, layered with some iridescent punchinella (from Gauche Alchemy, naturally) all stuck down and covered with Mod Podge. Then I wrapped the edges in ruler-patterned washi tape, but just letting the lines show.

It still wasn’t quite right, though. Something was missing. Inspired by all the mists that are popular these days, I grabbed some fabric dye spray I had leftover from making a pair of fairy wings and gave the card a strategic spritz. After it dried–a heat gun makes short work of that!–I was finally satisfied, and off it went (across the pond) to my swap-recipient, Jo of Fiddlesnips!

In return, I received this awesome 2-sided 4×6 from Michelle of My Analog Life.

Create Art 4x6 Swap piece (side 1)

What is Art 4x6 Swap Piece

Want to do some random act of arty-kindness? Take a piece of card stock and trim it to 4 inches by 6 inches. Then put whatever you want to on it: collage magazine cuttings, slap some paint around, decorate it with stickers or tape. Just keep it pretty-much flat. Sign the back of it (or not, if you want to be all crafty-ninja), put it in an envelope, and send it to a friend.

And since it is just 24 square inches, it’s a small thing, a quick project. Working within limitations isn’t a bad thing, every now and then, it gives you a safe space to be creative in.

Are you going to try your own 4×6?