Lately I’ve been trying to find online communities I can join to learn more about digital layouts and paper crafting…really connect with folks who like to do what I do.  In joining splitcoaststampers I noticed there’s a color challenge on tuesdays, so decided to join in.  There’s so much to learn about color and I’m always game for palettes to work off of…  Here’s my card for CC254 using bashful blue, soft suede and ruby red with a creamy ivory as my neutral color.

I used my yarn love heart digital stamp image and created it all digitally in Adobe Illustrator.  Thanks for stopping by!

Posted on January 19, 2010 at 11:42 am | Showcase | 5 comments

Wow, I found the coolest challenge over at Crafty Creations and their current prompt is to use textures.  Since I’ve been experimenting so much with digital textures I thought this would be a fabulous challenge to participate in.  I am also using the funny rat stamp from Digital Ink Co with the only funny sentiment I could find for the funny sentiment challenge in the ning group – and boy was it quite a challenge to match up a funny sentiment with the image!  Here’s my card design:

I created all the “papers” with textured graphics or photos, even the coloring of the rat is a textured color mix.  Pretty interesting to play with these real-world textures for digital layouts!

Posted on January 18, 2010 at 4:41 pm | Showcase | 6 comments

Experimenting a bit more with textures and overlays for my digital card designs, I decided to participate in the latest sweet stop sketch challenge.  We can only use a sentiment, so I went with the valentine theme for the central message, but used lots of texture on the various graphic backgrounds.  It’s pretty fun to play with these textures…although I am still experimenting!

Posted on January 18, 2010 at 3:31 pm | Showcase | 1 comment

Seems like I’m really on a roll today, as there are so many challenges out there and I am excited experimenting with different ways to digitally color and lay out card designs.  I happened upon the latest Everything but the Kitchen Sink sketch challenge and created this happy butterfly card.

It’s an all digital card using my heart butterfly digital stamp image and I’m working Adobe Illustrator, experimenting with texture and pattern instead of just flat color!

Posted on January 18, 2010 at 12:55 pm | Showcase | 6 comments

My friend Virginia is hosting a challenge on her blog Yes, Virginia… and I was so happy to participate.  It’s all about beating the winter blues and I can totally relate as it can get really cold and dreary here in Italy as well.  I decided to use my heart flower digital stamp image, the googley heart eyes version for a happy pink valentine card layout.  What do you think?

I think it’s definitely happy lovey dovey in theme and the wow factor for me is experimenting more with scanning real items (sparklies to create the heart shapes in the upper left-hand corner) and using them in digital layouts.  Adding those real life items really make the designs pop a bit more, although I still have a lot to learn still…

Posted on January 18, 2010 at 12:24 pm | Showcase | 3 comments

I wanted to participate in the latest Dare U 2 Digistamp challenge around the theme of using buttons.  I decided to go all digital in that the buttons themselves are digital imagery I created to make the heart shape for this cute little button love card.  The layout was something I saw on Two Peas Youtube Channel on using buttons in cards.  Pretty cute!  Hope you like it!

Posted on January 15, 2010 at 5:55 pm | Showcase | 3 comments

Guess I’m on a roll of really pink Valentine card designs now…I decided to whip up a quickie with the Hero Arts Digital Kit Ah Paris!  I’m still learning so much and wondering how I can get the texture and feel into digital card designs.  Still more experimenting to do, but hope you like this card!

Posted on January 11, 2010 at 4:15 pm | Showcase | No comments

I recently received this super cute bear stamp from Sweet n Sassy Stamps and decided to design a card with it.  So cute with the sentiment as well…I think this would be perfect for Valentines!

While I was designing all of this digitally, I decided to participate in the latest Sweet Stop challenge as they have such beautiful stamps.  It’s actually a sketch challenge, so I used their hunny bee image and created this layout in a similar style for Valentine’s.  Pretty cute!  Thanks for stopping by!

Posted on January 11, 2010 at 1:23 pm | Showcase | 2 comments

I totally forgot to mention back during the Christmas holidays that I created an Angel Illustration and you can download colored or non-colored for your projects.  It’s on my other blog which is more for my creative biz and artwork – that’s the plan anyway!  Hope you enjoy the freebie, however today is also Digi Day with Sweet N Sassy stamps and I decided to join in the challenge.

I’ve been under the weather this whole new year’s holiday which really sucked and there’ll be more sick times later this month…but I hope to get it all taken care of so I can move forward.  Nothing better than some cute designs to cheer me up…so I went all out and created a cute valentine card from some of my past designs (that you can download for free) – what do you think?

Posted on January 7, 2010 at 7:10 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | No comments