Art Journal - Digi Stamps

Hi everyone. I bought some Digi stamps from Vera Lane Studio and have been wanting to share how I used them in an art journal page.  They can easily be used for cards as well, so here goes.

A digi stamp is an image you can buy (or occasionally download for free) from craft websites. They may also be called digital stamps, or more affectionately ‘digis’. Once you’ve bought your stamp, you can simply print it off and colour it in as you would with a traditional stamped image.

Depending on what software you have, it is also possible to resize and even flip (create a mirror image of) the digital images to make them appropriate for cards of any shape or size. You can do this on Paint (which should already be installed if you have Windows) or Photoshop. Picasa and Gimp are image manipulation programmes you can download for free. It is easy to resize images in Word too and many computers will have this programme already-installed.

To create the background I cut off two 1” pieces from an Inkssentials Cut-N-Dry Stamp Pad Foam sheet and used the black side to sparingly apply Dylusions Fresh Lime and Calipso Teal paints to my art journal page. Just apply a little bead at a time and use a circular motion to apply the paint. It gives a slightly different look than when I use the foam side. It uses far less paint than using the spongy side. I didn't invent this technique.

Next I stencilled in a few places using the Stencil – Numbers Mix stencil and Dylusions Fresh Lime, this time using the spongy side of the cut and dry. Used Ranger Aquamarine Archival ink and stamped a couple of times in other places, then added splatters in Calipso Teal and white watered down paints. I love splatters – to me they lift the page.

I used a black and White Posca pen to do the border.

 I resized the images in my software programme and printed them out then fussy cut them. Coloured them using Jane Davenport mermaid markers.  Tip:  I used the tiniest little drop on an acrylic block and a water brush to colour them. I used a glue stick to attach to the page as the mermaid markers are reactive to water and might have run if I had used wet glue.  Added some Silver Stickles to the crowns and wings. I used a white Posca pen to add some extra detail to the images.

My sentiment reads……………..”No ordinary love story”.

Last but not least Vera Lane Digi stamps are “quirky” which I love.

Supplies:

Resized and Printed Vera Lane “Kiss the Frog” digi stamps
Inkssentials Cut-N-Dry Stamp Pad Foam sheet
Scissors
Dylusions Fresh Lime and Calipso Teal paints
Stencil Art Stencil – Numbers Mix stencil A5
Stamps
Ranger Aquamarine Archival ink
Black and White Posca pens
Silver Stickles
Jane Davenport Mermaid Markers
Waterbrush
Acrylic block
Glue Stick