For those of us who love to create and enjoy making cards, sometimes we may not have as much time as we would like to get them done! This past weekend, I was going to swap cards with my Stampin’Up! friends, and knew time was going to be tight to get my 17 matching cards completed. You may not need 17 matching cards to swap with friends, but what about a holiday card, party invitation, birth announcement, or some occasion or event you want people to know about!
Making a hybrid card can be the best of both worlds, paper and digital. One idea is to just print out your digital image as a regular 4×6 picture which you have the option to print at many locations. You can print them out at the drug store or wherever your favorite place is to make prints. If you plan ahead, you may be able to order them or use an online coupon and save even more. Of course, it will depend on how many you need as to how economical it will be to order and pay shipping, you’ll have to be the judge of that.
My Digital Studio (MDS) is a great digital software program which is easy to use and extremely economical. It even comes with a Free Trial. MDS has been recently updated and the price lowered to where I think it is such a value, especially for beginners! MDS is what was used for this card, and it only took two digital “stamps” to create this card.
If you plan to print on 4×6 photo paper, make sure to plan your design around combining that photo with your card size. Since we often create a card that is a half sheet of an 8.5×11″ paper, your finished card front is 4.25×5.5, so you’ll need to plan your photo accordingly. I find it easiest to make the size of what I’m working on a 4×6 and just watch my rulers for the sizing I will use for the finished card. After printing, they only need to have a little bit trimmed off, usually about
The digital images on this cards are:
- Vintage Overlay – Texture 8
- “Ex Libris” digital download (main image over the card)
- “Happy Mother’s Day” from All Holidays set
Also, during the digital design process, you can play around with adding embellishments and get an idea of what you want to do as you assemble the card.
The card base is a half sheet of an 8.5×11 piece of cardstock, folded for a final card size of 5.5 x 4.25 inches. After the “photo” portion of this card was printed, I trimmed the 4×6 because photo so that it would fit my card front, and adhered it. Now the embellishments of a rhinestone in the center of the “o” in the word “mother,” and bit of ribbon simply knotted in the center and adhered with a glue dot! That’s it.