the hybrid chick

I have recently discovered stamping and am still learning all the various techniques so I was really looking forward to stamp week here on The Hybrid Chick and the girls did not disappoint! I’m still a digi girl at heart though and as I was browsing through The Digichick shop, I came across a few things that I couldn’t wait to see printed out. I decided to start with the Nature Nut: Special Edition Rub Ons and Nature Nut: the Papers by Angela Woo and make a fabulous little card set that can be used for any occasion and can be personalized to suit your own taste with your favorite digital set.

Supplies List:
Digital paper & elements (In order to get the most realistic results, look for elements that wouldn’t normally have a drop shadow in real life.)
Bazzill cardstock
scissors
craft knife & ruler
Scotch dimensional adhesive
glue stick (I’m out of my Mono Adhesive Permanent and boy do I miss it!)
Cuttlebug (This is totally optional, but I just got mine this week and wanted to try it out!)
Circle Nestabilities

The first thing to do is design your cards in Photoshop, and this is the part where I appreciate digital because you can try different layouts without ever cutting a piece of paper. When I make a set of cards, I like to design one on top of the other in groups so that it’s easy to toggle the visibility of each group and see how the cards look together. Here’s a screenshot from my computer showing my workspace and card groups.

Once I have all the cards looking the way that I want them to, I open a new 8.5 by 11 inch document and start dragging the layers over and arranging them in order to get as much on each paper as possible. Usually I can fit two cards on each page when I’m creating in the standard 5.5 x 4.25 size like here. For any of the elements that I want a white background behind, like the rabbit in the card below, I create a solid white shape behind the element the size I like, then after I drag it and the rabbit layer over together onto my printable document, I add a 2 pixel, black stroke line to the outside of the white piece so that when it comes time to cut everything out, there will be no measuring involved.

I added two copies of the flowers to my printable document so that I could stack them for added dimension. Once I figured out how to fit everything on my pages inside of the printer’s borders, I printed them out and began to cut out all of my pieces and assemble the cards. Here are my printed sheets with room around some of my “stamped” images so that I could run them through the cuttlebug.

Putting the cards together is one of my favorite parts because I love seeing the digital design translated into a real life card. Creating a digitally-stamped card isn’t exactly the same as actually stamping, because it takes more planning on the front side and it’s not as easy to improvise as you go, but for those of us who are more comfortable with pixels than paper, it’s a great way to get your feet wet and use the digital supplies you already own in another way. Happy crafting!!

Other Articles by Jessica Pranaitis:

• Gallery Finds - March 10th, 2010
• Chinese Takeout Container - February 3rd, 2010
• Stocking Stuffer Gift Tin - December 23rd, 2009
• Thanksgiving Tree - November 6th, 2009
• Memory Verse Holder - September 22nd, 2009