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Floral Patterns Digital Stamps

linda — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:47:03 +0000

Hi everyone! I’m getting more organized these days and trying to get weekly features up on this blog, including digital card designs as well as freebie digital stamps. Here’s a free set of floral patterns, along with a gerber daisy. You can use the florals in a background pattern design or just individually for a beautiful card. I’ve also realized that digital stamp designs can also be used for embroidery. The possibilities I suppose are only limited by your imagination! I came up with these while working on repeating pattern designs – often doodling just happens – so I thought it would be nice to share.

Download Floral Patterns Digital Stamps ZIP (754 kb)

Please note that all my freebies are for personal use only, but feel free to link or blog about this to get the word out. Enjoy!

Just Saying Hello Hybrid Card Design

linda — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:34:28 +0000

Sometimes I design something, but then get distracted and totally forget about it. For this particular design I had run out of printer ink and couldn’t complete the card. Even when I bought more ink, I had already moved on to the next project and forgot that I had designed this hybrid card design. I thought I would post it anyone and see what you all think about this idea. It all started when I was inspired by a Jessica Sprague class on digital cardmaking. I was opened up to the possibilities of creating hybrid handmade cards, but not just printing out an image to color with copics. It’s such a creative eye-opener, so I decided to design one myself from scratch.

Download Just Saying Hellow Hybrid Card Design PDF (2.8 mb)

I created a simple card sketch and using the advantages of digital design to create my patterned paper. However, the card requires assembly with some sewing and added ribbon for that handmade touch and tactile feel. Of course, you could probably use the materials for a different card…I just happened to design it for that sketch. Let me know what you think, if you find these little projects fun and useful. Yay for hybrid card designs!

Big Idea Festival – Join for free classes!

linda — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:26:10 +0000

Oh my dear…I just logged into my Big Picture Scrapbooking account to start a workshop and noticed their announcement of the Big Idea Festival! It’s a free class with 13 days of 39 different projects, layout ideas and fun stuff! Talk about a steal…go sign up now! It’s completely free…that’s the amazing thing! The folks over at Big Picture are just so generous. I love ‘em!

Free Set of Bird Digital Stamps

linda — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:49:15 +0000

Hello everyone! I’ve been wrapped up in a lot of scrapbooking projects lately, but thought I’d take a little break from all the photos for a bit of digital work. I went through my digital files, adding a whole bunch of digital stamps to the store and decided to offer up these birds as free stamps. They’ve just been sitting around, so I hope you can make use of them. You might have seen me use them in the past as well.

Download the ZIP file of bird digital stamps

Hope you enjoy and don’t forget to sign up for my tortagialla newsletter to get free a free stamp in the newsletter! Until next time…

Free Cute Birdie Digital Stamp

linda — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:42:46 +0000

Hello everyone! So things have been quiet on the digital stamp front even though I’m working on the computer every day. I decided to release a free digital stamp for all you blog followers…just because…it’s been so long since a freebie! Here’s a cute birdie digital stamp…freckled cute, right?

Free free to click and download the full-sized PNG. Use in your lovely Springtime crafts and have fun! Let me know if you post your projects, I would really love to see if these freebie postings are of use to anyone as well BTW if you like these little birdies…there will be more coming as I sketch a birdie a day as well as create digital stamps sets with them. I’m also working on a collaboration using a few of them, so stay tuned for more!

Little Dreamer Designs Apprentice Program – Free Happy Springtime Kit

linda — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:19:06 +0000

I’m soooo excited to announce that I’ve been chosen as one of the 26 fabulous designers to be in the Little Dreamer Designs Apprentice Program! Woohoo, digital scrapbooking fun for sure. So to enter we all designed a free digital kit, so I went for a super happy springtime theme…

You can download the freebie through the freebies gallery on Little Dreamer Designs – here is direct link to my Happy Springtime Kit!

I’m super happy to be a part of the group, because they are all fabulous designers with beautiful kits. I’m just glad to be a part of the group, to show off some of my work while learning and growing with a great group of digital scrapbooking folks. Please join up to view all the Little Dreamer Designs gallery items and follow along the apprentice program as we complete assignments and show ‘em off week by week! I totally appreciate my lovely blog reader support…thank you in advance and please do enjoy the free kit! I would love to see what you make out of it!

Spring Flowers Printable Stationery Set

linda — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:10:03 +0000

Happy Spring everyone! I designed another freebie for my art blog, so wanted to share here as well. It’s a Spring Flowers design, simple and cute for your traditional correspondence. This is part of my efforts to promote National Letter Writing month that I posted about before. Just download the PDF below and print for your personal writing adventures. Enjoy!

Spring Flowers Printable PDF (222 kb)

Multiple Uses for the same digital background

linda — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:54:01 +0000

Hello everyone! Today I wanted to share multiple ways to use the same digital background. The digital format of stamps and graphics make it easy to manipulate in size and color before printing. I’m going to share some of the cards I made, using my owly stamp set and the free Hero Arts Friendship Definition digital background multiple times in different ways. You can get more dramatic depending how far you go with the variations…but the idea is to realize how versatile your images can be. In these projects I also used digital stamps, but cut out in it’s shape instead of a rectangle image.

For this first card, I printed out the background image as is in black. I decided to brush some watercolor on the edges to accent the rectangle as a frame and also to hide a bit of my crooked cutting! The sentiment I created myself because it’s super easy to create your own using any word processing program and all the font variations, sizes and placements to come up with something that works for you. My owl image was colored with copics and I quickly put this together for a simple sweet card to send home.

In this next card, I used the same background image but gave it a light blue color before printing out. It’s easy to change the color of an item by adding the overlay color effect in Photoshop. After printing and trimming to size, I inked the edges with a matching blue color, again to hide the crooked cutting I often do and also to accent the edge to frame my digital stamp. My owly stamp here was blown up pretty big for a dramatic focal point to my card and again I made my own sentiment – as you might have noticed I went for “owl-ish” sentiments.

In this next example, I printed out a colored version of the background image, but this time used it with the text on it’s side. It’s okay to use lettered backgrounds in this way, because you don’t really need folks to read it – the design is a decorative element. I put some eyelets in the corners to create my framed background and wrapped ribbon around to go along with my text as decorative lines up and down. My owly is copic colored and the sentiment was created in Photoshop and printed out, same as all other cards. The hearts I punched out from red patterned paper, super easy and cute!

Finally, I created this collage card using the same digital background but printed lighter…transparency is another element of a design you can vary to change up the same graphic. I put the image at 50% transparency before printing it out. The other elements of this card were simply collage pieces of scrap paper freehand cut to create the scene and I distressed the edges of paper or add stitching lines with a white gel pen to give it a finished look. These border techniques help to hide any crooked cutting and eliminate that raw look or cut paper. I used copic coloring again for the cut-out owly digital stamp and wrote up that sentiment in my “owlish” manner to match! I hope you have seen the variations possible using the same background image and I’m sure you can imagine the combinations possible if you mixed sizing, color, transparency, inking and all those variations combined. Thanks for stopping by and have fun using and reusing your digital elements.

Mother’s Day Digital Hybrid Handmade Card

linda — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:29:19 +0000

Hi folks! To kick off national letterwriting month and I consider it also send your cards month, here’s a super simple Mother’s Day card you can make. I am really big on using digital elements because of the ease of being able to download them immediately and also because I can create my own matching designs if I’m missing something. However, I also love the real paper, textures and touchy-feeling elements of handmade cards. So the best of both worlds in my opinion would be hybrid cards! Combining both sides of cardmaking I think really maximizes the potential for all of us to create. To start this lovely month of stationery and card goodness here on BackToPaper.com, here’s a super easy peasy way to use digital elements. The idea is to make a simple card by combining elements digitally for printout, but then adding a real-life embellishment to bring out the handmade feel.

To make the card above I used the free Sketch Tulips digital element from Hero Arts, my own designing in Photoshop and simple embellishments I had lying around already.

I wanted a distressed style, so I created the faded music paper background in Photoshop and put that behind the Sketch Tulip element in Photoshop.
Then I added a simple sentiment to the bottom with the basic text tool and added a drop shadow in white – so really it’s a glow to make the words pop a bit more.
I planned to add embellishments in the middle, so that’s why I left the space there, so now my is ready.
I printed out onto white cardstock in the size I wanted for my card.
I cut out the graphic a bit smaller than my white card base and added some dimension by inking and distressing the edges.
Then I added my real-life embellishment of string with a bright button around the center with a simple bow.
I glued that whole finished panel onto my white card base and tah-dah! All done!

Really easy, right? You can download the faded music paper background I created below, just click for high-resolution JPG. Feel free to use for your personal projects or paper crafting projects. I know sometimes it can be intimidating to use Photoshop or related programs, but this same card could have been done by simply printing all elements out and cutting them out individually to combine by hand as well. I really like simple hybrid cards like this, especially if you need to make 50 thank you cards, for example. You can quickly print out 50 copies of your design. I hope this will inspire you to use those digital elements out there and make a hybrid card. Enjoy and stay tuned for more hybrid projects like this one

Airmail Printable Stationery Set

linda — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:04:42 +0000

I created a quickie stationery set and shared on my art blog, but realized it would be perfect to post here since I’m all for traditional correspondence and sharing. It’s a simple but classy old fashioned feel stationery set, matching envelope and writing papers. Just download the PDF below and print for your personal writing adventures. Have fun and enjoy!

Airmail Stationery Set PDF (258 kb)