For today’s episode the main inspiration I used for my ATCs were my hobbies! Simple enough, right? I actually made two cards inspired by two of my main hobbies… photography and softball.

No, I didn’t make a writing-inspired card yet–that will be next.

The technique I used today was watercolor resist. On the softball card, I used a gray crayon for the stitching on the ball and the edge around it. I also tried to use some white crayon on the sky to add some detail… but for some reason it didn’t show up.

For the grass at the bottom, I used two different green watercolor pencils and then I blended the colors together with a little bit of water. And I love how realistic it turned out!

And that’s pretty much it for the Softball ATC I made today… Very simple, but it still makes me happy. Oh–and of course I felt good while creating it, because you know, art is therapeutic…

For my photography card I started off by drawing (with a pencil) the polaroid camera. I actually copied the camera from this picture I found on Pinterest…

Andtrust me–there was a lot of erasing juice used on this camera. After I finally got it the way I liked it (and remember, art isn’t meant to be perfect), I outlined everything with a sharpie and lightly colored it, in thin wavy stripes, with a pretty aqua, watercolor pencil.

For the words, I just wrote them with a pencil first to see how it looked, and then I erased letter by letter and covered them up with white crayon… Unfortunately the crayon didn’t show up very well, so I went around the words as best as I could with sharpie. This technique works best with short words of big letters that you color heavy with the white crayon.

Also, for the background colors I used a couple different shades of purples, and I also added some pink in with it. Then I kinda blended it together. And that’s all for the photography card!

These ATCs aren’t related to my hobbies, but I want to show them to you anyway…

Aren’t they so cool (and no–I didn’t enhance the color)? I made them with the watercolor resist technique! So I got a plain, white, watercolor ATC and drew come cool designs on it with bright, rainbow crayons. And once I got our pattern drawn out, I painted over it with black and/or grey watercolor.

So there you go guys! And remember–You can always get more creative with your art.

And I totally suggest making an ATC inspired by your hobby, ’cause you enjoy doing it, which means you have a lot to say about it . If you have a lot to say about it… I can guarantee you it will be an awesome card.

And also try making an ATC with the watercolor resist technique! I think it’s actually my favorite thing to do on my cards–even if it’s just a little bit of white in the background as clouds in the sky.

Check out this SwapShop video for a short tutorial on this technique we made back in 2013!

Are you gonna make an ATC with this inspiration?

♥Hayley

(Allison’s note: This was originally posted almost a week ago on Hayley’s blog. You might say I was a bit slow in reposting it here – sorry about that!)