June 12, 2007
Trading ATCs
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Since my post about Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) I’ve had a few questions from people who are interested is making them and are wondering how to trade them.
Well ideally Trading Sessions are conducted by groups around the world where creative people can get together, meet each other, enjoy each other’s work and chat. But most of us don’t live in this ideal situation and we don’t have the opportunity to meet most of the people we share our creative interests with in real life.
So the Internet has come to the rescue. There are many trading forums out in cyberspace but the easiest and probably widest spread is Flickr.
If you’ve made some ATCs and want to start trading I recommend that you open a Flickr Account, scan or digitally photograph your ATCs and upload them to your account. Have a look at my Flickr Account to see what I mean.
Then do a Search on Flickr for “artist trading cards” or “ATC” and you’ll find a host of trading groups. Some groups you can only join if a member invites you but there are heaps which you can just register with off your own bat.
Once you’ve registered with your trading groups you just add your photos to their pools with a tag saying they’re available for trade. Then you browse through the other people’s offerings and if you see something you like just post a comment asking to trade. Your comment will be emailed to your new contact who can go and look at your range of ATCs and identify one they would like to trade you for. It’s as simple as that!
Alternatively you could post your ATCs on your blog and trade from there. The advantage of Flickr though is that it provides a ready made network for you to link into which you may not have just through your blog contacts.
It’s a lot of fun trading with people from around the world and you can build a collection of many different artistic styles and media.
Why not give it a try. You have nothing to lose.
Stumble it!
8 Responses to “Trading ATCs”
Until now I have been able to resist… Like you I’m a sucker when it comes to collecting stuff (much to hubby’s dismay). *IF* I get into ATCs, it will be digital ones. BC (Before Computer) I was into cardmaking, but I hated the cutting and the glue-mess :p That’s why I love Digital Scrapbooking!
Any idea how big the digital cards should be - as in pixels I mean. 2,5×3,5 inches gave me an image of 177×244 pixels, think that is about right?
With my Campaign gone, I need another project *grin*
By Antoinette on Jun 13, 2007
I think with digital you still keep to the same physical size. The pixel count will vary depending on the DPI you use. I’d suggest making them at the standard 300dpi and then you can reduce the size when you save for the web (ie. take it down to 72 dpi). THat way you’ve always got your options open to do a good quality print, and when you send the the actual ATC file you can zip it up as a 300dpi jpeg or tiff file. Hope that makes sense.
By Karooch on Jun 13, 2007
ITA with your answer there Karen. The one ATC I made was at 300dpi using the standard size for ATCs. Worked out perfectly. hmm…maybe I’ll start doing some and doing some trading. Have you looked at Digital Art Quirks? It’s a site by Maya of Scrapbookgraphics. There are some beautiful ATCs floating around there. Now to figure out why I seem to be locked out of my Flicker account…stuff like this is always happening to me!!! ARG….
By Martha~aka~Krash on Jun 14, 2007
Tried to go to the site but can’t get in. I’ll try again later. Thanks for the link Martha.It sounds interesting and worth a look.
By Karooch on Jun 14, 2007
If you are making Digital ATC’s , how are you trading them? Are they meant to keep digitally? Or are they to be printed? Just curious.
Cindy Lietz, Polymer Clay Tutor’s last blog post..Baking Polymer Clay Safety Tips - Fumes From Burning Not So Good
By Cindy Lietz, Polymer Clay Tutor on Mar 28, 2008
Well usually you have two versions Cindy: a save-for-the-web version and a PNG version at full resolution. When you trade a Digital ATC you send the high resolution PNG to your trading partner(s). That way they can they can print out the ATC in a high quality print on good photo card. Or they can use it as an element in their cards or scrapbook layouts.
It’s a good idea to have a little ‘trademark’ that you put on all the digital ATCs that you trade so that it is known to be created by you.
By karooch on Mar 28, 2008