Inspire Me Monday: Word Play!

 

Hello all and welcome to another edition of Inspire Me Monday!  One thing I love about digital stamps is the ability to play with them and arrange them in a new way. In the past, I've shown you how to use digital images as both backgrounds and accents and today, we are going to get a little refresher course on how to use digital images to play with words! I've done this technique with all occasion cards, with holiday creations and today, we're going to do this with a bit of a juicy summer theme! 

Let's take a look at what we'll be creating today! 

Just a sweet and simple creation that screams summer and has a pop of cheery color! So, let's get started on creating this juicy little number!

To start, I used Adobe Photoshop Elements as my photo editing software but alot of these techniques can be done on similiar editing programs. I opened up the program and decided that I would use the word "hello" as my starting point! I created a canvas that measured 6 inches wide by 3 inches tall. I typed the word "hello" in the font Hello Regular in 150 point size. It's a free font that you can find for free HERE. 

After I typed out the word, I added a thin stroke around the word. 

Then, I flattened the image to create a background...

From here, I used the eraser tool to get rid of the white area internally within the word.

Now it's time for a little berry fun! I opened up the strawberry file from the Power Poppy digital stamp set called Cherries and Berries. 

Now all you need to do is drag and drop the image onto your word canvas. 

I also duplicated the berry file multiple times and then brought the word to be the front layer. And, at this point, I had fun just moving the different berries all over so that it would flow through the "hello." 

Afterward, I printed off my image and colored it up using Copic markers. I used R20, R32, R35, and R37 for the berries. YG03 and YG61 for the leaves and then used G0000 and BG10 for a little extra pop of color around the berries. I added some white gel pen to the seeds to help them pop a bit. I also added a little bit of Stickles to the centers of my strawberry flowers. 

And, after layering it all up, this is my finished card! 

As I mentioned at the start of this post, this isn't the first time I've played around with words and digital images. I thought I'd share some of my past cards just to show you the possibilities!

For this card above, I created the word LOVE and then used the digital set Graceful Still Life to create a flow of dogwood flowers around the word. 

And, above, I used the set Cuppa Buttercups behind this fun "Hi!"  I love just how cheery and colorful this one turned out to be! 

And there you have it! With digital stamps, there are so many possibilities -- so many more than sizing and printing! Techniques like these help you to create cards for any occasion, using some of your favorite illustrations as inspiration! 

I hope you give this a try! Until next time,