Hello friends! I'm sharing this card today that features Angie Blom Digital Designs with OLO Marker coloring. I used a lot of colors and share more details on that further down. I also have a lot of technical information regarding the formatting of the digital designs and the creative process, so buckle up, grab your favorite beverage and hang with me for a bit!
If you've never worked with digital images, my hope is that in sharing my experience and knowledge, it will be a little less scary! The cost is so much more affordable than physical stamps, and you have creative license to do so many things with digi files. Plus, Angie often has really great sales!
(FTC Disclosure: as an affiliate for various companies in the craft industry, I will receive a small commission for purchases made through my convenient affiliate links, at no additional cost to you.)
I'm using 2 different digital collections, Love The Lake Background and Let Your Light Shine Girl, using the sentiment from that set.
I also do all my editing and printing in Microsoft Word. I have an older version, so your version make look a little different but, below is a synopsis of my edits.
I keep an A2 size blank document in my computer files since that is generally the size of cards I make. When I add graphics, I simply save it under a different file. I also keep a saved file on my computer of every card scene I create, so all I have to do is print, if I want to make another later on.
You'll notice below, I sized my images to be offset all the way to the edge of my A2 size word document. That's because I wanted the image to fully cover my card. I did very little trimming afterwards. When I do this, I usually get a word "error" stating my edges are outside the printed margins, or something like that. I always click yes, that I want to proceed.
I had added some other elements, colored everything up and just wasn't happy with it. The reason I mention this is, I wanted to salvage the coloring from the upper portion of my sunset and trees. I trimmed my colored upper half at the "path", so I could splice it together with the lower half later.
To splice it together, I did use another white panel as backing, to adhere them together and line them up right and trim the edges as needed. You can't even tell, unless you run your finger across the center!
I ended up cropping out the bottom section of trees and water, so I only had the upper scene. I flipped it upside down and moved it to the bottom of my cardstock. I also wanted to make my trees look a bit more blurred, as a reflection in the water, so I found a really cool artistic feature called "glass" and converted it.
I should mention, you need to right click on your image first, and select format picture to find your options.
Once finished, I printed that on a separate sheet of cardstock and colored it just like I did for the top part of my scene.
All the designs are inserted as pictures when adding to a word document. I inserted my sentiment but needed to center it and scale it down just a bit. Because I wanted to print my sentiment onto my already colored cardstock, I needed to leave my lake image intact.
In order to move my sentiment, I had to "wrap text" "in front of text". This allows you to move an image around your screen when there are multiple images. Often times I have to edit my images, move some to the front and move some to the back in order to center everything just how I want it prior to printing.
Once, I had my sentiment centered, I deleted the other images from the screen so I could run my colored cardstock back through my printer and have my sentiment print on my scene.
You could also just print your sentiment on a separate piece of cardstock and adhere it to your colored card, but I really wanted to keep this a one layer card. They're my favorite cards to make!
I was really surprised how intense my coloring turned out, however, I laid down a lot, and I do mean a lot of color. I wanted to get as seamless of a blend as I possibly could.
To avoid any blotchiness, I used a side to side swipe technique. I don't know if that's a thing, but it works for me. I started with the base of my sun, coloring in oranges, then reds, and going back over several times, blending it all together. Start with light colors and work your way up to deeper colors.
It's so easy have your colors be blotchy in a large scene like this, so don't color in circles. Color all the way across, placing your marker so the side of your brush tip touches the paper. I try to do continuous coloring from left to right or vice versa.
I also added paint splatters and used a white gel pen in places; dotting the trees, adding some to the pathway and around the edge of the sun on the lower water scene, to soften the circle's edge.
For my pathway and around the lower sun, I would smudge the gel ink after it was applied, with my finger.
I did use a strip of low tack tape to cover my sentiment before creating the paint splatters.
Here's a breakdown of all the OLO colors that I used. Some are pictured above, but some were on the flip side of what you see pictured, since I typically purchase the half markers and use the ring connectors. So basically, you can have 2 markers in your hand at once! Also, another plus that I love about these artist markers is that they have a ton of ink in them. There's more ink in a half marker than any other brand of FULL markers on the market!
Colors:
RV0.1, RV0.2, RV0.4, BV1.1 (sky)
OR1.2, OR1.3, 02.4, OR2.5, R1.5 (sun)
BG2.3, B4.3, B0.5, BG 0.8 (water)
OR3.4, 02.7 (path)
My full card dimensions, after creating my card panel, trimming a backing with black cardstock and scoring my own card, was 4 1/4 x 5 3/4 inches.
I hope this has been helpful. I would love to hear from you in the comments! Also, I'm an affiliate for OLO Marker so if you decide you'd like to start your own collection of these amazing artist markers, or add to your current collection, I would really appreciate if you shop through my affiliate links, or even if just to browse for product information. These links are provided at no additional cost to you. The company pays me a small commission, a few cents per dollar for purchases made through my affiliate links. It also allows them to see how their customer base finds their way to their site, so make me look good, haha!
Browse or shop OLO Marker, here. Check out their resource section too, they have printables you can color, and also swatch sheets to print!
Thanks so much for stopping by. If you stuck around for all my chit chat, I appreciate you so much! Have a great day!
Terri
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