Using Digital Images

Using digital images is quite new to me. I never thought I would like them, but I’ve come to find them quite handy. They’re especially nice when you want something to color on a long car ride but don’t want to take the time, or simply just don’t have it, to mask and stamp out a bunch of panels.

Today, I will be sharing a card where the main focal point is a digital image that I purchased from Two Paper Divas. They have a very nice collection of digital images and the prices are AMAZING! And if digital images aren’t your thing, they also have a great selection of stamps too!

For this card I used the You Are The Light digital image. I do want to mention that although I used the digital image for this card, you can also purchase it in a clear stamp form here. After I had purchased and downloaded the image, I loaded it into my photo editing software, I use Adobe PhotoShop Elements 14, and resized it according to how I wanted it to be on my card base. Then, I just printed off the image.

Once I had the image printed off, I roughly trimmed it down to make it easier to handle while I colored it. I knew I would be trimming the panel down further, so I wasn’t careful to make clean, precise cuts at this point.

 

To color my image, I used colored pencils. I am still working to better my coloring skills, and trying to decide which mediums I like best, so for now I just use kid’s Crayola and Cra-Z-Art pencils. I just don’t know which mediums I am going to really stick with and until I make a decision, I really don’t want to invest a lot of money into any certain one. And for now, these work great for me. For this particular image, I used several different colors and just layered color until I got the blend I wanted.

Now that my image was colored, I trimmed off the excess paper, leaving none of the black lines that were around the image as a frame.

To give my card a bit of a pop, without taking away from the image, I decided to mount the image panel onto a bit of gold foil cardstock. I, unfortunately, didn’t have any. If you did you could easily just cut a piece out, but I had to take a few extra steps to make my own. I only had a few minutes to finish this card and really didn’t have the time to make a toner page on my computer, print it off, warm up my laminator, and then foil it. So what I decided to do was trim a piece of cardstock to slightly larger than colored panel and run some Scor-Tape, I believe mine is 1/8″, along each edge of the panel. Then I laid a piece of Thermoweb’s Gold Deco Foil onto the panel and used my bone folder to burnish it into place. It worked like a charm and I can use the leftover foil for another project!

Then, I used more of the same Scor-Tape to attach my colored panel to the foiled panel. And again, used the same tape to attach a piece of fun foam to the back of the foil panel.

To finish off the card I simply used, again, the same tape to attach the panel onto a top folding A-2 (4 1/4 X 5 1/2) white card base.

Here are a few more photos of the finished card!

I really love the simple design of this card that allows the colored digital image to shine!

As always, thanks for looking and happy crafting!