Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

Trend and Product Review: Digital Stamping

by

image by Heather Holbrook

image by Heather Holbrook

A big buzz word in the stamping world right now is Digital Stamping.

What is digital stamping you might ask? Well, it’s simply buying a digital image that you download to your computer and then print out and use like a regular stamped image. There are several advantages to using digital stamp images such as: storage, no need to store so many bulky stamps; cost, they are much cheaper than buying an actual stamp; helps the environment, no trees were cut down for wood blocks.

I recently gave digital stamping a try for myself and got some super cute images from Angel’s Landing. For each group of images I received an Adobe file with all the images and then each image separately in a PNG file. Their website has an easy to follow tutorial and helpful FAQ on how to download your images.

I really like the idea of being able to easily print them out on not only regular cardstock but other surfaces as well like printable canvas or vellum. I made the sweet card featured above by printing out the images of the birds on vellum and coloring them from behind with markers. I also liked how the images worked well with stamps I already owned, the music notes and words are from the April Word Puzzle stamp set from Close To My Heart. For my first try at digital stamping I found it really fun and easy to do.

The wonderful card shown below is from the Gallery at Angel’s Landing.

-Heather

 

image by Angel's Landing

image by Angel's Landing

Read These Next

Have you read?

Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]