Today we're looking at DIGITAL crafting and taking it a step further so its DIGITAL PLUS. There are tons and tons of digi stamps, backgrounds and elements available and with a little bit of knowledge you can make them into so much more. Try printing out your images onto patterned paper, cutting bits out and paper piecing, make your own unique backgrounds from your digi stamps, merge two or more, add text it really is limitless.
The challenge is to do something with a digital item(s) other than print and colour, be brave!
We have 2 fabulous sponsors for this challenge, first up is a familiar name - Stitchy Bear Stamps who must have the most massive choce of digi images under the same roof on the planet!
"Hi my name is Stitchy and I am Co-Owner of Stitchy Bear Stamps...we started this store April 1st, No Fooling haha..I live in upstate New York with my husband and two TEENAGE adults haha, I do say that loosely as they think they run the show here, NOT...
I started about 4 years ago making digital scraps and I knew there was much more out there, so a friend of mine introduced me to digital stamps...and the rest they say is history...I look forward to seeing all the beautiful creations come through...good luck everyone..stitchy xoxox"
I started about 4 years ago making digital scraps and I knew there was much more out there, so a friend of mine introduced me to digital stamps...and the rest they say is history...I look forward to seeing all the beautiful creations come through...good luck everyone..stitchy xoxox"
Stitchy Bear stamps is offering the lucky winner a choice of any 5 of their digital stamps! And what a choice there is!
Our 2nd sponsor is our very own Ei (Eiglas) who is also under the Stitchy Stamps umbrella! She is offering 3 digi stamps from her range which you'll find HERE.
We're also joined by a Special Guest for this challenge Peri! Lin has given her a grilling further down the page before Froggy link.
I love this collection of fairies with a bit of added magic! (Take a closer look at their wings.) I put together a background in Photoshop Elements using the lasso tool, gradients, and the cookie-cutter tool, then added the fairies, including the one who's managed to persuade a passing bird to give her a lift! The result is printed on glossy photo paper, and the card was finished with some layers, some Krenik blending filament, some die cuts and sticky gems! Images are Rainbow Magic by Stitchy Bear Stamps
For this challenge I really wanted to push myself a bit and I love merging digi images to make a whole new design so I chose a super fairy tree house by make it crafty and knew I wanted to make it fun and I was lucky enough to win some digis over at the One stitch at a time blog and chose Butterfly Love, Fae Away and Ice Princess as the main image. I've flipped the butterfly loves and fae aways, resized, hidden them so your task is to find them all hehe! I've coloured with promarkers and sakura stardust with white gel pen on the mushrooms, sentiment is from Stamping All Day.
Do something different with your digi images - that was the challenge. Well, after a morning discovering I can't merge digi images even though Vix's tutorial is excellent (turns out I haven't got Paint Shop Pro!) I decided to do something different. All my images on this card are digital (and all from the Graphics Fairy) and are printed onto glossy photographic paper. I started with the fabulous picture of the Eiffel Tower and made it my background, adding stamped images. Then I tied up the correspondence with ribbon and framed the young lady (I think she ran away to Paris to be with her lover!) giving her portrait height with foam dots.
Using the fabulous digi image 'Watching You', I flipped and resized her then printed her onto white vellum, printed her once again onto fantasy paper from My Craft Studio and attached the two together and added ribbons (which are white and not blue - must have been the light when the pic was taken) and pearls to her wings. Sentiment is computer generated using Scriptina font.
For our digi plus spotlight, I've taken one of my digis (my Haunted House) and one of HopeJacare's Doodles (her Tatty Cat) and merged them. Then I've coloured the image with my Copics and Tim Holtz re-inkers, then I've decoupaged the image about four times. All the shading is Copics not lighting!
I decided to take three images by Mo's Digital pencil - I Love It, Pammy's Socking and Timmy's Stocking and merge them together using elements programme. I have coloured them with copic's and derwent inktense pencil with some added glitz from spice glitter pens. I added flowersoft to the stocking tops.
I cut a large circle from mount board and layered paper cut using a circle cutter and nestabilities. The paper that I have used are by Papermaina. The leaves and some of the flowers are cut from matching paper. The other flowers and the bows/ribbon were from a Christmas embellishment pack. I added beads & pearls and some stickles to the design as well (though for some reason today, my stickles decided to come out in splodges.)
I have combined Stitchy's 'JOY' image with one of my own new Christmas images and used Promarkers to colour, I stamped the background to give the impression of wallpaper, then distressed the edges and spritzed the background with some gold pearl pigments. I also added some glossy accents to the Christmas lights and some glitter to Snowbaby's fur cuffs & hood.
I've used an image from Digistamp Boutique, coloured with promarkers, then added some shading using koh-i-noor pencils blended with sansador. I made my own paper using another Digistamp Boutique digi multiple times, and then added some stars (just using the shapes function on Word). The stars were filled in using Word, but colouring the 'cheers' images digitally was beyond me, so I printed my page onto linen card, and coloured them in with promarkers, adding some stickles for a bit of sparkle. Added some raffia trim to finish.
I decided to make some shrink plastic jewellery for my digital plus spotlight but I had some real hassle with supplies and faulty machinery. I have to thank Crafty Computer Paper for coming to the rescue with the Inkjet shrink plastic.This is a gift for my great niece together with the card in the picture. If it could go wrong, it went wrong this week, but I got there in the end. Please see my blog for my tale of woe.
Over to our Special Guest - Peri Hill.
"Hi, my name's Peri and I'm delighted to be your Guest Designer for this Spotlight challenge.. You could have knocked me down with a feather when Linda asked me - it's a huge honour to be invited. I've been crafting for as long as I can remember - I come from a very arty crafty family! I didn't become serious about it until about 2000, when I became ill and couldn't work. I taught myself to bind books and built up a small craft business, selling cards, handmade books and thermographic landscapes. When I was ready to return to work, I was lucky enough to be employed as a binder with a local bindery, working alongside the owner to grow the business. Unfortunately, book binding is a pretty strenuous job (lots of hammering and lifting heavy books!) and after two glorious years I had to give up the day job. When I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in December 2008, I took up my card making again, with a completely different style, and I started blogging timidly in September last year. I love being part of a whole creative universe in Blogland. I love working with digital images and I'm proud to be a member of Mo's Dream Team, Karen's Doodles DT and Just Inklinked DT. I hope you’ll enjoy what I’ve come up with for my GDT spot this week. Happy crafting!"
This card was inspired by Mo’s Digital Pencil’s fabulous collection of Alice In Wonderland images – I could have gone on merging for hours! The only reason I had to stop was that my printer can only handle A4 paper!
I use a free programme called ‘Paint.net’ to merge my digital images. It’s simple to use but has most of the features of the more expensive software many people use. I merged the four images, ‘Cheshire Cat’, ‘Mad Hatter’, ‘Alice (in pencil)’ and ‘Dormouse’ but wanted to have a table and ‘unbirthday cake’ too. So I drew these in pen, scanned the drawing in and brought it into Paint.net to merge it with the scene. The rest is just straightforward card making, using papers from the fabulous Graphic 45 ‘Halloween in Wonderland’ collection. You can see more on my blog: http://periscardblog.blogspot.com/.
What's your favourite crafting technique?
I’m not a great technique user, it has to be said. But you may have guessed that I love to colour. I think one of the best colouring techniques is Prismacolors and gamsol (or low-odour white spirit in my case!) – it gives a lovely finish.
What are your top 3 crafting tips?
Mmmm, a difficult one – these will be very boring, I’m sure, as I’ve no wonderful wisdom to impart!
1. Don’t throw anything away that has crafty potential! I even keep the insides of empty sticky tape rolls – you never know when things will come in handy. A bit of imagination and some pretty paper can transform anything, at a fraction of the retail price you’d pay for blanks.
2. Keep your blades sharp – there’s nothing worse than trying to cut with a blunt blade or pair of scissors. Invest in a ‘snap blade’ knife so that you can refresh the blade regularly.
3. Don’t be afraid to have a go – what’s the worst that can happen? Experiment first with cheap or plain paper before committing yourself to using your expensive stash, but keep having a go. The more we practice and push ourselves, the more we learn and it keeps the mojo alive!
Is there anyone out there in blogland who you really admire, or a particular crafter whose work inspires you?
I spend every lunch hour surfing my favourite blogs – it’s the only time I get. There are so many wonderfully talented and creative people out there that I couldn’t possibly list all my favourites. But I have to say that I always keep coming back to the two who first got me interested again – Paula Williamson (http://paulatracy66.typepad.com/paper_possibilities/) and Linda Heavens (http://heavenscreatedthis.blogspot.com/) – their colouring and layout skills are just phenomenal.
What's the one crafting tool you could not be without?
My Copics, of course! (Oh, and my computer. And my Spellbinders Wizard.)
Thank You Peri!
Okies over to you and your creations!
