This is a digital stamp from Sugar Nellie. I love the idea of it, but I need to find another way to print out digital images. This one in particular didn’t have a white background. It is certainly very pale, but there’s a fine pattern of coloured ink dots throughout the image, which bled as I coloured. You can really see it in her skin, as that’s the palest. When I set my printer to ‘black ink only’ it didn’t print. That might be my problem with my printer, but it didn’t make this little fairy a joy to colour, let me tell you.

The background paper was in the 10/$1 section at my LSS – it’s completely flocked, so the whole thing is fuzzy. The weird thing is that I coloured this image, then went out to the store, but the colours match perfectly! Choosing the right adhesive for this paper was very important. I have started using one of those sticky dispensers that you just run along the paper like that whiteout I love so much. Glue stick (or at least the UHU I have) never seemed to bond quite right, and with one bend of the card, the whole piece of paper would ’snap’ off. Love the Tombo adhesive runner. It worked like normal to stick the flocked paper to the card. To stick the cardstock to the flock…. not so good. I ended up peeling it off (easily) and sticking it back down with regular old white glue. Not sure if this one will get sent, but it was a good exercise in things not always working out.

This is the second image from The Greeting Farm’s relay giveaway. It’s snowy and cold here, so I wanted to make something with bright colours – and I don’t think there’s a brighter combination than orange and pink!

Again, I had problems with printer ink bleeding. She’s wearing smokey eyeshadow now! The worst culprit was actually my clear Spica glitter pen. It really made the ink around her eyes drip.

The layout was inspired by this week’s Friday Sketchers. The orange flowers were in a prize from The Stamp Shoppe. I used them all up on this card, but I felt it needed lots of flowers to go with the patterned paper. The brads I just bought, they’re flocked! So the flowers have fuzzy little centres.

I have to say, I kept thinking of Zoolander while colouring this image. The Greeting Farm is giving away free digital stamps in a relay-style thing. You get one, make a card with it, and if you post it by the deadline, you get the next image. As my work is crazy, I don’t think I’ll get all of them, but I’ll manage to get the first 3. This is #1, Mer-Ian.

I used another new border punch on this card – it’s bubbles! I didn’t want too much contrast, so I backed it with a pale green, but it looked good with dark blue too. It was a hard choice.

I put some Stickles glitter glue on his tail, to make it look scaly and shiny.

This marks the first time I’ve ever used a digital stamp! It took a few tries to make my printer print it nicely. I wish I’d had the time to take it somewhere to photocopy it – apparently toner doesn’t smudge with Copics. Ink jet (at least my printer) does, but it is only noticeable with very pale colours, like his skin.

I took an in-progress shot of how I coloured his sea weed-y hair:

This picture was taken before I did any blending. You can see the band of white I left for the highlight. I colour over this while blending, but that way it only has one layer of colour, making it lighter than the rest.