Make it digital...

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a good week so far. It's nearly the bank holiday weekend so we know what that means - more crafting! Please excuse any typos my 'dear' cat Jinx is on the desk in front of me and he keeps pressing keys - I hate to imagine what gobbledigook will end up on this post, I do try to proof read my blog posts but occasionally the odd typo will creep under my radar and end up in the final version.

This week's challenge over at Passion For Promarkers is to make it digital i.e. use digitally produced digi stamps, papers or sentiments please click the link for more details  http://promarkerchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/week-360make-it-digital.html . I'm not a huge fan of digitally produced cards either from CD ROMS or downloadable items so this week's challenge was a hard one. But as I had my printer out anyway to print out the eBook from week two of the Colorista Adult Colouring Course and the homework practice sheets, I decided to finally print out a digital image I got free after signing up for the Greetings Farm newsletter. I'm not sure if this image is actually an Anya though she does have the rag doll like arms as I can't recall what this image is called but it seems similar to one and is very cute. Mermaids are the new unicorns at the moment lol, and I do have two mermaid images in my stamp collection but like the unicorns that are still popular the mermaids currently doing the rounds are very cutesy images and the two I own are either too dark (Mirebelle Mergirl) or too realistic (Prima Dolls Mermaid - which I wanted so much then used it once!). Pretty much everyone is giving their mermaids either Ariel hair (bright red) or rainbow hair which is really nice but I'd worry about them being easily spotted by fishermen and ending up in a zoo or similar. *okay I know there's no such things as mermaids (as far as we know!) but I can't help think that they'd blend into their environment to help them keep safe from predators* With that in mind I've coloured my mermaids using greens or muted colours so they can hide in seaweed etc.

This wasn't the easiest of challenges for me to take part in not least because I've never actually used a digi stamp before. I did like the fact I could alter the size of the image - this one nearly fills a 4 1/4" x 5" panel so I printed 4 out onto a sheet of  A4 Sheena Douglass stamping card - I'm not even sure if that's the right card to use for digi images but I tried it first onto matte photo paper and Promarkers just don't blend on it so I worked with that I'm used to. The main problem I had was it took nearly five hours to print out my eBook and the mermaid sheets, I don't know if that's because the PC is rather old, or if it's because I'm not using Cannon ink cartridges and my printer is sulking or if it just didn't like printing out on cardstock but whatever it was that caused the delay it certainly didn't make me like digital images any more than I did. I used Flex Markers to colour this image apart from the grey background and bubble which is a Spectrum Noir BG01 marker and colour less blender (sorry Promarkers!) TBH I only used the Spectrum Noir markers because my greys have all dried out in my Flexmarkers (I prefer ordinary Promarkers because they seem jucier then the Flex markers but the FM were nearer to me!) I really like how the bubbles came out especially when I added a white highlight to each one - I just wish I'd placed them slightly differently because it looks a bit like the mermaid is well, farting lol.  Once I'd coloured the image in I added it to a panel of Centura Pearl green card from the Darks collection. I added Clear Shimmer Marker and Glossy Accents to the mermaid's tail and to the starfish in her hair. I diecut the shell, starfish and seaweed using a variety of thin dies out of scraps of the stamping card and coloured the seaweed using a Real Color Brush Marker and a bit of water and the starfish in with Flexmarkers (Gold and Amber) I arranged them on the bottom left corner and stuck them down using a glue pen. I added some gold holographic sequins from a pack of Dovecraft Glad Tidings sequins as shown using dots of Dovecraft 3D Pearl Effects in clear which is a really strong adhesive, the sequin near Anya's face is actually there because I accidentally smudged a bit of green real brush marker on her arm and face and it still showed through more skin tone pen (think I used Antique White which is flesh coloured). Here are some more photos and a darker skinned and hair version (which my hubs prefers).

Sorry there's so many photos but I wanted all the details (like the glittery glossy tails) to be highlighted. I'm thinking about framing these two mermaids because I really like how they've turned out. I was half expecting the printer ink to react with the alcohol ink in the Flexmarkers so it was a peasant surprise to find it didn't - I did allow the printed pages to dry overnight though so I'm not sure if a digi image can be coloured as soon as it pops out of the printer. I would like to print this image out on my super smooth card stock because the card I used seemed to suck the ink into itself rather quickly and although there wasn't any bleeding outside the lines the ink went straight through to the back of the card something I've not really noticed using my super smooth card.

If you are into digital crafting or just want to challenge yourself out of your crafting comfort zone like I have, then please click on the link at the top of this post for more details on the Passion For Promarkers Blog. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places as I love to read them. I hope you all have a fantastic bank holiday weekend - hopefully the weather will improve (it's chucking it down here!) but if not rain's perfect crafting weather!  Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx