Cocoa's Heart - I {Heart} You :-)

Happy Monday Sweet ‘n Sassy Friends! 

Julie here and since we just celebrated a new Digital Stamp Release this past week, I thought I would share a fun Valentine’s Day card that I created with some of the digital stamps that were already in stock- Cocoa’s Heart and Valentine’s Day Greeting.

Did you know that Sweet ‘n SassyStamps has over 200 exclusive digital stamp images (also known as “digi’ or “digi's”) in the online store?  

Are you intimidated by digi stamps?  

You do not need to be...they are so easy to use and you can print them out and color them just like a normal stamp image.

One thing I personally love about digi stamps is that you can re-size them to fit your design- for this card, I printed out the Cocoa’s Heart image along with cropping the sentiment from the Valentine’s Day Greeting set.  

FYI- I did re-size both images for this card and before printing them on my white cardstock, I also inserted other images onto the document (I can use the other images for several cards in the future :-)).

Also, were you aware that you can color digi images with watercolor pencils, sponging, ink with a water brush (Distress Inks, etc.), alcohol markers, regular colored pencils (plain or with Gamsol)- basically any medium that you use for regular stamps.  

I print my images out with an inkjet printer, so the only tip I can recommend regarding coloring digital images would be not to saturate the image with too much water or get too close to the printed lines with water (the printer ink can bleed a bit into the coloring medium if it is too wet).

I decided to color the Cocoa’s Heart image using Spectrum Noir™ Alcohol Markers and used a Faber-Castell® Pitt Penn marker to add the border.  

After coloring, I “fussy-cut” out the heart and mounted the image onto white cardstock and cut around the heart by hand to create a white border.

I wanted to add some shimmer, so I used a waterbrush to paint Frost White Shimmer Paint over the entire heart (but tried to avoid Cocoa)...it is a bit difficult to see the shimmer in the photo (fyi- I also added Crystal Effects® to Cocoa’s nose, but again, this is difficult to see in the photo :-)).

The sentiment from Valentine's Day Greetings was printed and banners were created with a hexagon punch (although you can also create really fun banners with the Sweet ‘n Sassy Stamps Banner Dies- these are on my "wish list").  

I mounted the banner onto a piece of black cardstock and layered everything onto the card using the Splitcoaststampers’ SC568 Sketch Challenge for inspiration.

I hope we have inspired you to try some of the digital images for yourself- if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Hugs and have a blessed week, sweet friends!!