March Card for 2014 Christmas Challenge

Jake & Kitty present the March Card

In February I discovered the true joy of digital "rubber" stamping.  Oh, I've known about digital stamps -- and often use the Stampin' Up! digital images and plenty of other stamp-like images and "real" images found in digital scrapbooking kits.  However, I discovered digital stamping and LOVE it.

There are tons of sites devoted to digital stamping and I will be sharing a few of them soon.  The one I want to share today is:  http://digistamps4joy-sa.blogspot.com/

There is a "challenge" in progress there that may be of interest to you.  It is the 2014 Christmas Challenge.

Every month, a free digital image is provided.  You download the image and make a card using that image.  Upload it to your blog and post a link using the Mr. Linky at the  challenge post or email it to Desire if you do not have a blog.  I missed the January installment of the challenge because I did not know about the challenge then.  But if you make one card a month, you will that much ahead when the holiday season comes around.  WHAT A GREAT IDEA!!

Actually, I printed off the given images in a variety of sizes and made more than one card in February;  the image was a young dinosaur with a Christmas ornament dangling from the tip of his (or her) tail. That was so fun to color!

Jake and Kitty present the February card for the 2014 Christmas Challenge

I've made just this one card, so far, in March because my printer is acting up.  It is getting low on blue ink but for some reason is printing in green and ignoring the fact it has a new black cartridge recently replaced.  **Sigh**

Then, it decided to stop printing.  Well, that isn't true ... I put one of my fish on the scanner bed and hit the button for "copy" and a semi-decent printout landed on the drop area.  If I try to print from the laptop to the printer, I get an error message "Printer not ready.  Check connections."  Connections are apparently fine as a "scan to computer" command works just fine.  *BiggerSigh**

Anyhow, until the printer starts behaving -- I think I won't be doing more cards with this image.  Although, green is a festive color and I have a few more prints of it that I can use ... Hmmm ...  :D

In case you are wondering -- the items I used to make the card include:

• Strathmore Photo Mount Card with Embossed Frame (lovely watercolor paper texture to the card, too) -- I LOVE these cards because the embossed frame makes it soooooo easy to place the 4x6 inch image
• The March Image 
• Background papers are by Close To My Heart
• The image was printed on white cardstock, then I lightly sponged Whisper stamping ink around the edge (also by Close To My Heart).  Feeling in the mood to be a bit strange, I popped one of the air pockets I received in a package recently -- it is green plastic and I decided to wrap the print in the plastic.  I found a couple scraps of cardstock and colored them with Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils;  hand-drew a few bits of holly and used the pencils to color them in too.  Wrapped one of the bits of cardstock with polyester embroidery thread by Polystar.  Used a bit of grosgrain ribbon from a packet purchased at Wal-Mart in the 97 cent craft supply bins.

You can join in the 2014 Christmas Challenge too!  Visit the blog for Digistamps4Joy (http://digistamps4joy-sa.blogspot.com/) and click on the challenge button.  Hope to see your card posted there too!  :D