Whimsy Digi Blog Hop is ON!!

Welcome to my blog and the last stop on the Whimsy hop that kicks off December's digi release!  It's a big one, with new digi's from me, Ann, Katie and Melissa of Meljen's Designs. Plus me and Mel have coloured up some images for you to use as pre-coloured images!  Each file is JPG at 300dpi for high print quality.  And as usual, you can alter, resize, flip, or crop these images to your heart's content! 

If you have come from Sandra's blog, you are right on track.  If you want to start at the beginning and go all the way through, start at The Whimsy Blog where the hop order will be posted for your convenience. 

Now since I am the last stop, I will be choosing a grand prize winner from the comments on this post! But be sure to leave comments along the whole hop because two more blogs will also be randomly chosen to dish out some free images.  

The grand prize I will give to one lucky commenter will include their choice of five Whimsy digital images, and the chance to use those images as a GUEST DESIGNER for the month of December!  How cool is that! Chillin with the Whimsy Chicks for a month. 

You have until Tues. Dec 7th at noon to complete the hop.  Hop winners will be announced sometime after that. :-)

The first set of cards uses "Leap of Joy" fully coloured.  Now this image, and all the coloured images now for sale are also available as regular black-and-white images as usual.  Here is a link to the regular black and white version of Leap of Joy.

Here is a close-up of what the pre-coloured image will look like when you purchase it for immediate download (minus the watermark of course!):

I coloured the original on water colour paper using water based inks, namely Tombow Pens and Distress inks.  The white snow was hand painted with Copic White after the water colours were dry.

I wanted to chat with you about the pre-coloured images Whimsy is now offering.

I realize that a lot of us find the fun part of making the card is the
colouring. That being said, it is also great to be able to make up a card in a
hurry when you need to.
The upcoming holidays esp put a lot of pressure on us to get cards made. And
sometimes, it is impossible to make a card for everyone on your list, just for
sheer volume.
The pre-coloured images offer a workable solution to that problem!
I had a brainstorm idea to combine Ann's lovely digital frames with my
pre-coloured images and make cards on my computer that I could simply print off!
Once you create the template, it is so easy to just hit "print". Then after a
trim and a fold, voila, you've got your card! It is still hand made, but it
only takes a couple of minutes of your time!
Now mind you, the pre-coloured images can still be used as we normally use an
image we have coloured ourselves. And we can still layer our cards and
embellish them as always. (see the post below this one for an example)
I just wanted to point out that the other option, to print off a simple flat one
layer card, is also there.
I used a combination of effects found in iPhoto and Photoshop Elements 8 to
create the image templates. I then brought them into Word where I resized them and added text.
It was such a dream to work with the beautiful frames Ann created for us! It
was fun to add some colour to parts of them, and to stretch them to fit my
pictures. I think her frames plus pre-coloured digi images is the perfect
marriage!

The deer card used Ann's Happy Holidays frame from Dressed Up Shapes 2. 
If anyone has any questions as to how I did any of it, I'd be happy to answer
you.  I won't be doing a tut on this anytime soon.  I really don't know how to go about that, as it was all done on computer.  And with so many different photo shop type programs out there, telling you how I did it on mine will only help those who have the same programs I have.  Nonetheless, if this computer-challenged non-geek can do it, anyone can! lol

Here's what I printed on the inside:

And on the back:

Here is another sample using "Touched By Love" pre-coloured digi in combination with another frame from the Dressed Up Shapes 2 set or sold individually as Curvy Frame Small Dots: 

I'm using these cards to also kick off my December challenge over at Sundays With Crissy.  Our theme for the whole month of December is Christmas is Coming or Winter is Here (your choice). Please join in the challenge if you can, and show us your Christmas or Winter cards!

Why not pay a visit to the Whimsy Store to see all the new digi's available, and mark your calendars for a new RUBBER RELEASE coming DEC 8th!

Thanks for your time today!