How about a little digital water coloring?

Whoever it was that figured out this method of coloring in MDS deserves a prize because I think I wouldn't like MDS quite as much without being able to color in lined images.

1. Position your image in the place you want it on your page. In this example I used the flower from Cottage Garden

2. Next find a punch that will best fill the open area of your image. I used the narrow oval and then changed the shape until it fit. Remember if you are going for a watercolor look you don't need to be perfect.

3. Choose the button that fills the punch with paper. Select any paper it doesn't matter -- we aren't really going to use it.

4. After the punch is filled with paper double click on the punch shape you just filled with paper. This allows you to see where the punch is "punching" on your sheet of DSP. Use your mouse to drag the paper until there is no more paper showing in your punch shape. Now your punch shape is invisible.

5. Now we want to create a drop shadow for your invisible piece of paper. Click on Drop shadow. Change the color of your drop shadow to be whatever color you want to color in with. I also change my blur to Medium and Opacity to about 60% depending on the color and my background. It's easy to change.

6. If you have a symmetrical shape like this flower, you can take the shape you've already created and copy and paste it over and over. Something to consider before going on to the next step is once you've arranged the colored in part of your flower and you are going to make more like it is to select all of the petals and center if you have one by holding down the SHIFT key while you click with your mouse and group all of these layers. Then copy and paste as many as you need. Big time saver!

7. Last step, Click on the outline image and rightclick and choose to bring it to the front.

I love this technique!

Here's one more example of a more complicated coloring project. This is from Pedaling Past
This was a lot more complicated to color in so I saved it as a JPG so I could import it as a picture instead of having to color it again. Here is the project that I used it on:

These are some tags that I made for an upcoming Quick Card class. Here are my samples for the class:

Thanks for looking!

State Fair Punch Art

I don't usually go for a cutesy style but my kids really like it. This page was really calling for another tractor. So I decided to build one -- out of punches at least. This mostly consists of the rounded rectangle punch. The nice thing about punch art is that you can layer punches and all of the pieces that are the same color blend in with each other so it appears as one cohesive unit. When I finished making the smaller wheel I held shift down and selected all of the pieces and grouped them. Once they are grouped I can copy the grouped object and paste and make an additional wheel that I can resize. It saves a lot of time. The buckets are also made with punches and I also colored in the kids from All in the Family with punches.

When you want to color in a digital stamped image like these kids with a bold look follow these steps:

1. pull the image onto your page and get it positioned and sized the way you want it

2. find the appropriate punch shapes that will fill in the areas you want colored. You may have to overlap images to make this work. Don't forget that if you need duplicates of the same shape save time by copying and pasting.

3. Once you have covered the area that you want to be filled with color, select the stamped image and right click on it, choose Bring to Front.

Hope that helps anyone that wants to be in the know!

Going way back

I've taken such a long hiatus on my blog that I don't even think my friends check my blog anymore. LOL But here is another page with my son was just a little guy. He's 10 now. It's been fun doing these pictures from so long ago because I start feeling sentimental about my kids. I almost think I'm nicer to them. Ian was so hard at this age because he was so adventurous that I was constantly having to know exactly where he was. These days he's either on a computer, in his room, or playing some kind of game.

Cubscouting Page

I've been doing my catch up scrapbook pages in My Digital Studio. One of the nice parts of the program is if your in a complete funk you can just use one of the templates and alter it from there. This page started from a template shown below.

I just used the smaller photo boxes as a place holder and replaced them with elements. Then I put my title in place of the upper text box. You can use any font that is in your computer for the text boxes, so I have beefed up my font library on both of my computers.

I'm really loving using MDS even if I still prefer traditional scrapbooking. I don't think I will completely switch over. But it will give me the opportunity to catch up some time this century!