ACEO - A First for Me

Recently I introduced something new for me in my Etsy shop SaRoMaSa. ACEOs. For those of you already familiar with the term and concept you can skip down a ways or go straight to my shop. For the rest here’s just a little background on ACEOs.

ACEO stands for Artists Cards Editions and Originals. The only rule for them is their size 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches. Yes that’s right inches. Same size as sports cards that are avidly collected by sports enthusiasts. The ACEO has a similar purpose but rather than celebrating sports they celebrate the arts, all at an affordable price. Probably the most inexpensive way to collect art is to buy prints. This is very similar to buying regular size art. While the format of ACEOs is small the work that goes into it may consume as much time as a larger piece. I am still amazed at some of the detail in these small pieces of fine art. The type of art may be collage, fine art painting, photography, quilting, fiber arts, and anything in between.

Looking at a blank 2 ½ by 3 ½ inch canvas my mind goes blank. It took a lot of courage to finally attempt to create a collaged ACEO. The first one got smeared right at the end of the process. I almost cried but instead cut out some more yellow tulips and pasted them over some of the first tulips. Not bad. (Although, I had planned on using those extra tulips on another project.) I then scanned in my ACEO and used PhotoShop to remove some more of the smears. Okay that looks better. I’ll keep the original partly because I like to keep all of my “firsts” and partly because it will remind me later that being flexible is one key to being successful. So this one is now being offered as a print.
The second one I made is really an ATC but I’m offering prints of it as an ACEO. ACEO’s were really born from Artists Trading Cards (ATC). ATCs have one more rule. They are never to be sold, only traded or exchanged, or given freely. The original was part of an ETSY team trade with the theme of Spring by BBEST and made its way to one of the members.

The other two prints currently in my shop are a reduced copy of an acrylic painting by my daughter Marilynn and a sewing collage. To see more of my daughter’s work visit Ladiesbydesign and click on Marilynn. She has a Flickr badge that showcases some of her work. While you are there I encourage you to spend some time reading her posts. Besides a visual artist she is an artist with words.
The sewing ACEO is a print of a collage I made to use as an invitation to a gathering of sewing friends. I have reduced it here to fit the size requirement.
I’m working on more collage pieces and more ACEOs (both original and prints) so stay tuned. As always I look forward to your comments.