Hi folks! This week, I decided to go through the process of making a card from scratch using digital and real elements. I suppose you would call it hybrid and since I’m really looking forward to Spring weather, I decided to use the Tuscany landscape I live in for inspiration. Although I feel like all cardmaking is hybrid, given that someone printed pattern papers or those embellishments you are using…I guess you can say that it is all mixed media. You do and use whatever needed to achieve the look you want, right? Here’s the finish card and I also incorporated a bit of paper piercing given the current digital tuesday challenge.

I started by sketching out a design for my card with simple pencil and paper.  Once I decided roughly what I wanted, I went onto the computer and drew the hills and printed on watercolor paper, then drew the sunflower and clouds and printed them on cardstock. I actually wanted to print everything out in color, but I ran out of yellow ink…so I had to improvise. The hills were actually watercolored in but the clouds already had blue when printed. I also added some sparkle via heat embossing to the clouds. The rest is regular cardstock, stamping and embellishing.  Although I also spent a whole lot of time cutting a slice of cork and gluing the string to it! I could have added some faux stitching with a pen, but this time around added the paper piercing for the border to add a different look.  I think it’s pretty cool to be able to create a card from scratch and that enables you to really match up the colors and elements. I love digital cardmaking, whether all digital or hybrid, because it gives me to the power to create what I need.  A digital stamp image, a background or some embellishments maybe?  I can print things out in color to match perfectly as well…the possiblities are endless.  I hope you will try hybrid card making as well.  If you want to use my images, feel free to download below…although that sunflower is pretty tedious to cut out, I must admit!

Posted on March 9, 2010 at 11:49 am | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | 10 comments

Hello lovelies – I just wanted to jump in and quickly share the release of my first digital kit…for all your crafty projects.  It’s free, it’s a mini kit because it’s all experimentation, but I hope you can use it.  Hop on over to my design blog tortagialla to download it!

Posted on February 10, 2010 at 6:51 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links | 3 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

Hi folks!  As I continue to work on my little creative career over at tortagialla.com I realized that a huge part of what I do is creating digital stamp images and graphics.  I’ve been adding to my Etsy store slowly and been thinking about how I can combine all my work and share with the community.  Suddenly, I had this idea to include a free digital stamp image – a unique one – in every tortagialla newsletter.  Isn’t that a fun idea?

It’s a bit like subscribing to other digistamp creators newsletters, as they usually always offer freebies and inspiration to their fans.  So go on and sign-up for my tortagialla newsletter to start getting your free digital stamps – or even digikits!  I’m taking requests if you want certain designs as well, because I’ll be doing something custom and different for each newsletter…I’m thinking once a month to not overload people’s inboxes.  At some point if this all grows bigger, perhaps I can have multiple newsletters.  But I can’t put the cart before the horse…haha!  Hope you’ll join in the fun.  Thanks for stopping by as well – Happy Holidays!

Posted on December 19, 2009 at 2:07 am | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links | 1 comment

After the Xmas tree graphic tag I decided to do a birthday one as well.  Just so happens I’m wrapping up gifts for a friend’s birthday as well as xmas!  I created a simple graphic in Adobe Illustrator as shown below.  Feel free to click to see full-size and download for your personal projects.  I printed it out on cardstock, punched a hole and used it as a tag decoration on the gift.  Simple and easy!  I realized there is a birthday theme on the Digital Tuesday challenge blog, so I’m entering this cutie!

Posted on December 17, 2009 at 8:14 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links | 2 comments

In a last minute holiday rush, I love to create little designs to print out for decorations and tags on gifts.  The nice thing about digital is the ease of printing them out and the ability to duplicate as many as you need for the holiday season.  Today I whipped up a little xmas tree graphic.  It’s a quick design I created in Adobe Illustrator with some simple shapes and matching holiday colors.

I printed the image on some nice cardstock, punched a hole on the top and strung it onto a wrapped gift for decoration.  It also serves as a tag on the opposite side, where I wrote the to and from names.  Super easy!

Feel free to download the design your personal use – just click to see the full size high quality JPG.  I am entering this into the Digital Ink Co Challenge regarding a last minute project.  This is a perfect match for the challenge!  Happy holidays to all and thanks for visiting!

Posted on December 17, 2009 at 7:44 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | No comments

Whoa, a bit behind this week and I am just catching up on all my RSS feeds!  December 8th is a holiday in Italy, so this past 4 day weekend has been family time.  I found a bit of time today to participate in the digital tuesday challenge, to create a card around a Christmas song.  The first thing that came to mind was Jingle Bells!  A classic, right?  Here’s my card design…

I created all the graphics for this card and also the bells and stars background paper.  Feel free to download the PDF of the pattern design below for your personal use!

Posted on December 9, 2009 at 11:58 am | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | 2 comments

I was doing some digital illustration today and wanted to use the little holly wreath I drew, so created a quick digital card design using the Digital-Ink Co Challenge sketch.  I drew all the elements and just quickly put coordinating red and green colors together for this layout.

Also, feel free to download the holly leaf pattern paper for your personal use, I have created PDFs for the green version and also white version.  Enjoy!

Posted on November 19, 2009 at 6:24 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | 6 comments

Here’s a quick design I created following the latest Sweet Stop sketch challenge.  It turned out smaller than I though, dunno why I worked in such a small size!  I am really into the scribble-ish line look at this point…so using it in a lot of designs!

I also made PDFs of the star background paper for you to download and use for personal projects.  There is the yellow background version or the opposite white background with yellow stars version.  Enjoy!

Posted on November 18, 2009 at 7:39 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | No comments

I got a note in my inbox announcing a Digi Day Cookie Exchange Party & Challenge in the SNR Card Universe Ning Group, so I had to participate with the free digital stamp they offered up.  How cute is that gingerbread cookie?  I believe it was created by Digital Delights by LoubyLoo!  Talk about talent…woohoo!  I used the image in the digital card layout below after coloring the image in Photoshop.

I really like how my cookie pattern paper turned out, so I am offering it here - download the PDF of cookie pattern paper for your personal use.  Hope you have fun!  Thanks!

Posted on November 12, 2009 at 5:50 pm | Free-Template-Tutorial-Links, Showcase | No comments