Middle school art teacher Lazzelle Parker sent me a little box of goodies, including these wonderful pieces of painted paper. I used a few of these in my previous article, but I had quite a few of them left. I just had to find out about them, and think of something fun to make from them.

In emailing with Lazelle, I learned the origin of these pieces. She told me that at clean-up time, her students love to fold their cardstock paint palettes, which often have quite a bit of paint left on them, and put them on the drying rack with their paintings. Without knowing it, her students are making a form of monoprint, and creating some incredible background papers. (More about monoprinting can be found in the how-to section of the site.)

The first thing that came to mind when I saw these papers was artist trading cards. Each piece was just large enough to cut two cards, with very little waste.

I just squared off each piece with my paper trimmer, and cut two 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inch cards from each one. There was a little bit of waste, which allowed me to sort of trim off whichever edge was least interesting.

These ATCs look pretty great all by themselves, don’t they? The colors are really wonderful. My goal is just to do a little accenting, without covering up too much of the backgrounds.

I did some really minimal rubber stamping with black dye ink, and stamps from Ink & the Dog and Stamp Camp. I planned my stamping to cover any flaws, like paint that had flaked off, or islands of white paper without any color on them.

A few buttons and some glue, and I have a really wonderful set of ATCs.

I’ve been looking at my own waste paint differently since these cards arrived. Now, I’m smooshing a piece of cardstock into the extra paint at the end of every painting session. I’m also keeping an extra piece of cardstock next to me to clean off my brushes. Next time I want to do a quick set of ATCs, I’ll be that much farther ahead.