Greetings friends, let’s talk digital. I have always steered clear of digital crafts since it’s basically what I do, all day – professionally. Years ago I attempted to dabble in digital scrapbooking. That lasted a few minutes. Digital stamps never appealed to me either. I like to get my hands dirty.

Enter the Coffee Loving Cardmaker’s Summer/Spring Blog Hop. 1,468 entries and I was lucky enough to win one of the 73 prizes. I was super excited. What did I win, you are wondering? A gift certificate to Polka Dot Orchard. What’s that, you are also wondering? A digital stamp shop. True story. Now don’t misunderstand, I was still thrilled. I still won something. And that’s awesome. And, it gave me an opportunity to share with my friend Donna who likes digi stamps. So I let her pick and I ordered a few that I thought were cute. And then I forgot about it.

Friday rolls around and Donna comes over for dinner. What does she bring…the printed digi stamps on various papers. She’s so thoughtful. In my head I am thinking, I guess I am going to have to do something with these. So a few nights later while on my weekly zoom call with my friend Laura in FL, I felt like coloring. What’s sitting right there on my desk? The digi stamps that Donna was nice enough to print out. Since I was worried about the printer ink smearing and I had not used pencils in so long, I grabbed the Prismacolors. I colored while Laura and I chatted. I had forgotten how I enjoyed coloring. By the time we were ending our call, I had a beautiful image to use on a card. I was pretty damn excited.

Needless to say, that night my Graphic Designer mind went haywire with the possibilities this had. Plus, I could not wait to get this on a card. So here is how it turned out…

Since the images were already colored and cut, the rest of the card came together pretty quickly. I used Salty Ocean Distress Oxide with my favorite blending brushes from Picket Fence Studios. I sprayed water on a Vicki Boutin waves stencil from the Wander collection and pressed it down. The sentiment is from Colorado Craft Company’s “Be a Mermaid” set. It is embossed but it is hard to tell in the photo. I used a white pen for highlights. Donna gave me the idea to add shimmer to the fish so I covered it in clear Wink of Stella. The last thing I did after placing the images was use Stampin’ Up Fine Tip Glue to make water droplets.

I have to say, from the point of wanting nothing to do with digital crafts and then completing this card, I am pleasantly surprised with the outcome. Is it possible there will be more digital designed projects in my future? Stay tuned…