The Weiman Wranglers are on the loose!

Howdy y'all! It is my pleasure to announce the release of a very special set of digital stamps. At the request of the thoughtful Lauren Meader, the fabulous Melissa at Pink Cat Studios designed this cowboy which honors the memory of little Ethan Weiman who you may have read about here last week who passed away after a courageous battle with cancer beginning when he was a mere 3 years old. This little buckaroo left his mark though and while heaven has gained a sweet child, his memory lives strong here on earth with his family and many friends. Read more of Ethan's story here. Melissa has posted a special digital stamp offer on her blog {here}. All proceeds from the sales of the cowboy Ethan and cowgirl Ava digi stamps will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Illinois at the Weiman family request. Please check it out to see details and also the first projects designed by the My Time to Create Design Team with these adorable images. Visit Melissa's blog through the lnk above to purchase either image with sentiments ($4) or the whole set for $6.

For details on the projects, please visit the My Time to Create blog links below:
Lauren
Alicia
Dawn
MacKenzie
Maria
Kendra
Kristen
Tracey
Pam
Jen
Odette
Lisa
Tamara
A few design notes on my card.....Most of the image has been paper pieced with cardstock or printed designer paper. I replaced the balloon string with an embroidery floss that resembles rope and also fun flocked Ethan's hat to give him an authentic felt hat look. His trusty steed was paper pieced and the embossed with swiss dots because his shape reminds me of a toy pony and I wanted to give him a playful look. Cowboy Ethan is riding the range of his imagination with a loosely watercolored backdrop using a water brush, SU! inks and cardstock. What wasn't paper pieced was carefully colored with Zig brush markers. These are dye based inks so I had to take care to not smear the lines printed by my inkjet printer. For more on treatments to ink jet printed images to avoid smearing, please see the tutorial I wrote {here}. Also, as I understand it, copics will not smear the ink but I don't have any :( so I can't say for sure. A final touch of silver glitter for a shiny buckle and pant conches and pearl for his shirt front pearl snaps and he was all dressed for the range.

Now for those of you who question whether or not digi stamps are for you I would like to share some tips from my own trial and error sessions in Microsoft Word. I use the 2007 version so if you have a different version some actions might be slightly different but hopefully the tabs are similar enough that these tips will help. I do all of my digital stuff in Word so it just goes to show, that a little bit of tech goes a long way :) Please click to enlarge the pictures for more details. Note: tomorrow, tuesday, Tracey Cuccia (see her link above) will be posting an extensive tutorial about using digital images. Be sure to stop by her blog for more info.

Moving and layering images Once you have downloaded your images, open a new document and Word. (I like to use the grid layout on my page so that is why you see grid squares in the background) Copy and paste your Ethan and Ava images into Word or use the image insert command in Word just as if you were inserting a photograph into your document. Click on the image you want to move around the page. See photo above, I clicked on the "you're amazing" sentiment. Once you click the image, the Format tab appears at the far right of tab options on the top of your document. Click on Format, click on Text Wrapping and then click on In Front of Text. This will allow the image to now move freely about the page.
Click and hold the pointer on the sentiment image and drag it over to the balloon to position it where you want it. Ta da! You've just stamped the balloon!

Paper Piecing with digital images Paper piecing with digital images is a snap! Once you have your image manipulated to the size you want it to be, print it once on plain printer paper and once on white cardstock. Above, the plain paper is on the right and the cardstock on the left. To get a checkered shirt, I adhered a small piece of checkered paper over the shirt area on the plain paper (right above) and printed again on the same plain paper. The shirt was cut out and adhered to the cardstock over the shirt area. Perfect fit! Below is another example using brown scraps for the horse and hat. I embossed the horse after the image was printed. Thanks so much for stopping by today. I hope you'll go visit Melissa's blog today and check out the details for the sweet Ethan and Ava Weiman Wrangler stamps. I can't wait to see what you make with them!!!

Supplies:

Digi Stamps: Weiman Wranglers by Pink Cat Studios

Paper: CM, Papertrey

Pens: Zig writers and CM silver

Ink: Su! and Colorbox

Fun flock

Other: silver glitter, pearl fabric paint, embroidery floss, SU! distresser