Category: ATCs, ACEOs, and Digital Art

How to make Artist Trading Cards, ACEOs, and other digital art, plus free samples to download.

Dreamcards – from an ATC swap

Art can be very revealing, whether that’s intentional or not.

These are two ATCs (aka: Artist Trading Cards) that I created, and what I wrote about them in 2000:

Dreams and Nightmares - ATCs from Sept 2000

They are two cards from an ATC exchange, with a theme of “Dreams and Nightmares.” The originals are 3″ x 5″.

My dream card features images of my children, DisneyWorld and my paints.  There’s also a view of the houses directly across the street from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s main theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.

What I hope to show with this collage, is what is most important to me: Color, in all its definitions. My family, experiencing life and having fun as we travel and discover new things; the colors of our emotions, the scenery, and our memories of happy events.

My nightmare card features stark, perhaps menacing images without color or hope.

The images include (top to bottom)

  • the same paints as on my Color card,
  • the poorhouse in Kilmallock (Co. Limerick) where my gr-great grandmother died, and
  • the view (looking up towards the sky) at a castle in Co. Galway

Over those images, I added photos of:

  • a truly spooky angel at the Irish cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also
  • a self-portrait of my ex-husband.* (Really. He took this photo of himself and gave it to me.  He said that he thought it was a good photo of himself.)

These are not dark or hopeless images in themselves, but I added drama by increasing contrast, so they take on new aspects.

What surprised me the most is that the Color (dream) card is – as many of my recent collages have been – A bit disjointed, compartmentalized, and a little empty.

By contrast, the No Color (nightmare) card flows, the images blend nicely, and I actually prefer this as art, compared with the Color (dream) card.

Technically, the No Color one is a vastly better work of art.

I think this is rather revealing, and indicates some self-work ahead of me.

(No, I do not actually think there’s “no hope” in this – or any – area of my life. Remember, this art is created from my imagination, using images that I have at hand. Yes, it means something, but please don’t take it all literally, or too seriously!)

But, this is what art is about: self-discovery.

Even when I’m dismayed by what I see, it opens the door for me to make changes and improve myself and my life.

So now I’m wondering: Why are my nightmares so much more vivid and easy to access, than my dreams? Why do they flow when the dreams do not seem to reach my consciousness without effort? Why are my images so compartmentalized?

These are, in a way, rhetorical questions. My personal (offline) diary will probably show what I discover.

I can tell you that, when I saw what I’d said with this art, I started taking very positive steps to make immediate changes.

I didn’t get into this situation overnight, and it probably won’t be an overnight change to get things back on track. But I’m working on it, and I see progress, and that’s the important part.

two parallel lines

UPDATE

[Reminder: I wrote that in 2000.  Since then, there’s been a divorce.  Both of us have remarried.  I’m living a very happy life again, and returning to the creativity that I’d enjoyed in the 1980s and earlier.]

* When I originally wrote this and had said “my husband” in this article about my two ATCs, it was before my 2003 divorce.

As of 2026: I’ve been happily married to a delightfully fun and supportive man, for nearly 20 years.

(I’ve kept my ex-husband’s photo in this art because, unless you know my ex-husband very well, you probably won’t recognize him. He was that different, outside of the house, or any time he thought he might have an audience.)

Nevermore – Free Gothic Artist Trading Card

edgar Allan poe ATC by Aisling D'Art

This is from my 2005 series of daily, one-hour artist trading cards, also called ATCs.

In 2005, these were an alternative to “morning pages,” an affirming art journaling process based on Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way.

Artist’s notes from 2005…

For some reason, I was in an Edgar Allan Poe mood this morning.

When I was little, the very first TV show that I can recall seeing was “The Fall of the House of Usher” on PBS, a dramatization of the Edgar Allan Poe story.

(I must have been about four years old at the time. I’m sure that it made an impression that is today reflected in my love of gothic art.)

The background is a page from a copy of the 1817 Farmer’s Almanac that I own.

Next, I added a public domain image of Edgar Allan Poe, found online and altered to suit this card. (See my Resources list, below.)

I used this image in my Edgar Allan Poe Shrine several years ago. The raven on his shoulder is from that shrine as well.

Over his torso, I placed an image from a New Orleans cemetery. When I first saw this falling-apart grave, I thought of the Poe tale. As I made this art card, adding this Poe-like image seemed like a logical step. Of course, I changed the Hue and increased the Saturation; the latter by about 90%.

My exact Photoshop process:

  • Using Photoshop with my desktop computer, I selected Poe’s torso with the rectangular/select area tool, and made a copy of it.
  • I pasted that to a different window and removed the background.
  • Then I increased the contrast of the clothing so that it was sharply black and white.
  • Next I selected the black areas (magic wand tool) and copied them.
  • I pasted them as another layer, over the existing Poe clothing.
  • With the selected areas still outlined, I switched layers so that I was working with the cemetery image.
  • I inverted the selection and cut out (removed) areas of the picture that covered white portions of Poe’s clothing.
  • Then, I flattened the image.
  • Finally, I added the word, “Nevermore,” from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and added a drop shadow to the text.

The finished image is 3″ x 5″ (at 150 dpi) but you can print it at a smaller size.

How to print this Edgar Allan Poe artist trading card

Right-click on this artist trading card link and save the image to your hard drive. Then, print it at 150 dpi if you’d like it in the original 3″ x 5″ size.

(When artists were trading art cards in Red Dog Scott’s swaps, the requested size was usually 3″ x 5″. That’s why this is larger.)

Or, in your printer settings, you can print the card in the more standard ATC size of 2.5″ x 3.5″ and improve the resolution as well.

This finished art is copyrighted, but you can print it freely for your personal use, as long as you don’t alter the design of the card.

RESOURCES