Digital embossing

 

One of the things I love about using digital stamps like this zentangle fairy from FCD is the ability to use digital effects.  It is easy enough to print a white image on a colored background, and equally easy to use a bevel effect to make the image look like it is embossed onto the paper.  Of course, you can feel the embossing, but this card has plenty of texture without it.  the light purple cardstock has a metallic weave texture, and the dark purple cardstock has little swiss dots.  It was fun punching the border, and the flower is from a silk hydrangea bush.  That is a metal nailhead as the flower's center - I needed to break up the symmetry.

FCD Blog Hop - No Place like Home

Hi there! If you just arrived from Boni's blog, you are in the right place; if you are a regular reader of my blog, we are doing something a little different today - I'm blog hopping with the Design Team of FireCracker Designs by Pamela, with the theme of "There's No Place like Home".

This is a “circular blog hop” where the only beginning is wherever you start!! You will know you are at the end of your blog hop when you’ve come back to the blog you’ve started from! (It’s not a huge circle…so it should be easy to remember where you started.)

Now, to the art - these would have been an easy challenge, except I had already chosen my art before I knew the theme. I had a manatee and a zentangle fairy digital stamp to use in my creations.



I was creating the Acrylic Emboss background for this easel card (have you ever seen a long easel card like this before?) when I realized who I wanted to give the card to - I know a Navy family that will be moving (again!) in the near future. In case you can't read the sentiment in the picture, it says, "Home is where the Navy sends you". I really had fun gluing down all those little seashells, too!

Anyway, the card really shows off one of the coolest things about using digital stamps - you can flip and resize them to whatever dimensions you like. I used the Penciled Twinks technique to color the manatees.

Now where does a doodled fairy live? Most doodles are in notebooks, so this project was a no-brainer, and surprisingly quick and easy, too.



I happen to like the black and white patterns on composition notebooks, so simply adding this little nameplate was perfect for me. It looks like it took hours to doodle the image, the border, and the text, but every bit of it was done digitally - I used the fairy as a fill pattern!

Now, to continue the circle, you will need to hop on over to Ursula
and keep going until you’ve come back to where you’ve started! There is a prize...

The winner will be chosen from a mystery blog hostess (we don’t even know who it will be until the hop is over) …so that’s why you’ll want to leave a comment on EVERY blog, so you don’t miss out!

**To find out if you’ve won… you will be contacted by Pamela via e-mail (so be sure to leave it with your comment.) and you can also find out on Pamela’s blog after the blog hop ends on Mon, at 8:00 PM (EST).**

Thanks so much for playing along with us and we hope you have a great time!

Sparkle Parrot

The sparkle Acetate technique is one of the few that actually works better with digistamps than regular rubber. I find it to be a pain to stamp with Stazon on acetate. Printing directly onto a transparency is much easier. For this technique you then have the second challenge of applying adhesive to the acetate to hold the glitter - it is a problem because glue won't dry unless it can breathe, and it's hard to get good coverage with dry adhesive unless you have a Xyron. I morphed the technique by using a packing tape transfer to pick up the image, and then using the adhesive on the packing tape to hold the glitter.



The great thing about this technique is that the glitter is underneath the tape, so it can't get knocked off, and the image is clearly visible. I drew the tree freehand with my nearly dried up copper leafing pen, glued on leaf confetti for leaves.

The image is from FCD of course. Cat Gondek draws the cutest things!

Do you think that it is odd that a parrot would be sitting in a deciduous tree? I always think of them as tropical birds, but apparently there are large numbers of wild (feral) parrots in the Netherlands, braving the freezing temperatures and arctic winds. I've read and seen videos of them on Hetty's blog.

Highlighter fairy

I was sitting at my kitchen table, pondering a sheet of digital images while my son packed his backpack for school, and I was suddenly inspired to color this little zentangle fairy with highlighters. I was surprised at how well it came out. I was even more surprised at how many matching elements I had to build this ATC. The letters are holographic stickers, and this is the first time that I thought they looked nice instead of tacky.

You can buy the zentangle fairy digistamp at FCD. This meets the Fun with ATCs Flugel challenge. It's also appropriate for the allsorts new beginnings challenge, as it is inspired by the beginning of the school year.

Apple inchies

I needed some apple inchies for this month's lottery at Inchies-onexone, So I used the same Apple Orchard digi I used Sunday, pulling out only a few select apples.



They are highlighted with glossy accents to give them that polished apple shine.

Magic mushroom

I think this mushroom image from FCD is cool! It needed a black background, though.



I wanted to throw some shooting stars into the mix, and the glitter patterned paper just adds to the hippie vibe. A big batch of brownies would be good about now...

Apple Orchard

FCD has a freebie this weekend that is very timely, so I had to snag it to make this card.



I hate hate hate coloring, but I had to do it. For this I used gel pens, blended with markers. Did you know you could blend gel pens with markers?

Namaste' Octope'

FireCracker Designs by Pamela has a digistamp that I think is absolutely adorable, of an octopus sitting in a lotus position. The image was originally drawn by Cat, one of my favorite swapping buddies. When I was given the chance to be a digital designer for FCD for September, the Namaste' Octope' was on the top of my list.

I felt that yoga and zen go hand in hand, so the first thing I did was zentangle around the octopus.



I knew I was going to watercolor it, so I scanned the zentangled image and printed it out with my laser printer - toner prints resist water. I colored the images with my Twinkling H2Os, which are very shiny!



I started off making postcards. My sister liked them so much that she snagged one for herself.



Then I realized that I needed more, in different sizes. I printed a handful of ATCs and a couple of focal images for cards, and had a great time painting.

Here are my ATCs:



And here are my cards. Can you believe I've mailed them already?




It is such a fun image! Are you wondering about the black paper? It really does have a blue streak in it. It's Color Explosion paper, but my pens dried up, so I just use it for black glossy now.