Tutorial - Level Up Your Digital Stamps

Pre-coloured digital stamps are very handy when you need a quick card, but you can also use them as a base for other techniques, such as washy watercolours (if you have an ink jet printer), or sepia toned cards. Today I want to show you how to level up the colours, which is especially handy if your printer is like mine, and a bit miserly with the ink.

1. Print the pre-coloured images onto a sheet of cardstock. I used MSWord to resize and position all four of the images onto a panel for my card. You can use photo editing software if you prefer, and you can work with a single image if that works better with your design.

2. I'm going to apply gel pens over the top of some of the colours in the image. You don't have to recolour the whole thing to get a great result, instead, choose a couple of colours that appear in multiple places in your image, like accents. For example, I wouldn't choose blue as there are large areas that would require a lot of colour!

As you can see, adding a little bit of red has already brightened the entire panel.

Next is some gold and silver.

3. Use a white pen to add shine and highlights, particularly on the edges and corners of metal objects, like my robot, and in the eyes of any characters.

4. To add dimension, use a couple of shades of grey to place shadows behind the image. Start with the darker grey and trace a line around the outside of the image, then soften with a lighter grey. For the best result, only add a shadow on two sides of the image - for example, the right hand side and the bottom.

Here's a before and after...

Digital Stamps: