Tag Archives: ATBs

Why does everything have to be a balancing act (tutorial included)

Why does everything have to be a balancing act (tutorial included)

ATB-1-web

ATB Circus Cannon Tutorial Level of Difficulty: Advanced
 

Both of my kids are circus performers. Don’t get me wrong–they aren’t out on the road, performing in big tops across the country. Rather, instead of participating in youth soccer or baseball, they take classes and perform at a circus performing arts school.

They both walk the wire, known to non-circus folks at the tightrope, The Daughter™ rides unicycles tall and small, The Son™ performs aerial straps. They do lots of other circus stuff too. While they aren’t the star performers at this very competitive school–far from it–the fact that they undertake these acts of courage when they both have serious anxiety disorders is pretty amazing. When The Son™ started at this school as a six-year-old, he found playground slides too frightening. Now he walks the highwire.

Anyway, since this isn’t a mommy blog (really, no, really it isn’t!), I shared this to point out that with my kids doing all these daredevil acts, you would think I would know a thing or two about balance myself. Apparently not. I demonstrated this when I neared the final stages of completing my Artist Trading Block (ATB) Circus Cannon. There I was–cheerfully working away with everything going smoothly. Then I attached the cannon barrel to the block and watched in dismay as the barrel lurched into the ground. If this was a real circus cannon, the circus girl would be shot straight into the elephant poop. Read the rest of this entry

Making my First Artist Trading Block (ATB)

Making my First Artist Trading Block (ATB)
Making my First Artist Trading Block (ATB)

In the last few months I’ve been fascinated with the up and coming trend of Artist Trading Blocks (ATBs). Basically, the ATB take the Artist Trading Card (ATC) into three dimensions. While I have always loved seeing the amazing ATCs that my instafriends created, I never jumped on the bandwagon. However, something about the added dimension of the ATB. has made this trend irresistable.

One night during a typical netflix-while-crafting-binge, I watched the 1996 Jane Austen movie Emma, starring Gywneth Paltrow. A delightful quote captured my heart so much so that I was compelled to use it for my first forray into the ATB world.

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Duct taping the mean girl

Duct taping the mean girl

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm
between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
–Isaac Bashevis Singer

 

I came across this quote the other day. Somehow, I thought this only happened to me. There have been so many times when I had a specific idea in mind and the end result was disappointing. Sometimes a project was even an all-out failure.

More often than not, a project turned out “ok”, but a great rift still separated it from my inner vision Read the rest of this entry