Have your ever looked at an artsy scrapbook page and thought, “Wow, I wish I could do that!”? I’m here to tell you that you can! If the thought of tackling a full 12″ x 12″ layout seems daunting, however, then my advice is to start on a smaller scale. Let’s talk about digital Artist Trading Cards!

What are Artist Trading Cards, or ATCs? ATCs are small pieces of art, only 2.5″ x 3.5″ in size, that are usually traded or swapped with other artists. They are like the creative version of baseball trading cards. Although you might think that ATCs lend themselves more to traditional scrapbooking because you exchange them with others, digital swaps are fun, too! Imagine opening your email and finding a handful of cards waiting for you. By allowing yourself to just “go with the flow,”ATCs might give you an artistic outlet that you had not considered — and they’re easy to do!

Step 1

Open a new canvas, 2.5″ x 3.5″ in size. I like my ATCs to be vertical, but you can also do horizontal, if desired…

Step 2

Pick a background paper (this sounds a lot like building a regular scrapbook page, doesn’t it?). I like the look of chipboard, so I’ll often reach for a kraft paper. For this card, though, I’ve selected a grid paper from Real Life by Calista’s Stuff.

**TIP** If you’re thinking of adding brushes, stickers, stamps, etc., to your ATC… then you might want to start with a neutral or more-solid-colored paper to give yourself somewhat of a blank canvas to work on.

Step 3

Now you can start layering digital stamps and brushes onto your background paper. You can choose one, two… as many as you like! Keep in mind that most digital designers create with a larger canvas in mind (for scrapbooking), so you might have to re-size a few things as you go. What I have here are two brushes — one placed just on the edges, and then another placed over the top…

Step 4

Finally, you can add some dimensional elements, if you wish. Just as was the case, above, with regard to re-sizing brushes and stamps — you may need to re-size elements, as well, so their proportions are in line with your smaller canvas size. Also, watch for shadows, especially if you are using pre-set shadow styles…

Step 5

Finally, add finishing touches like a title, word strips, or a favorite quote. I could have stopped at the previous step, but I wanted to add some word art. What I found, however, was that the black of the word art really jumped out at me because I didn’t really have anything else of that color on the ATC. I was left with one of two options: recolor the title, or add some black to the card elsewhere. I went with option 2, and voila! I added a butterfly to help tie everything together, and my trading card was finished…

Just like with any other creative outlet, how or what you design is really a personal preference. ATCs are unique to everyone, and can mean different things to different people. You don’t have to do any journaling or add photos, if you don’t want to. Your ATCs can be 100% digital, or you can print them out to create a hybrid project. Creating in an artistic style is something everyone can do. Why not give ATCs a try and see what you come up with!? Give yourself permission to play! 🙂

About the Author Kat Hansen is a creative team member here at The Digital Press. A Director of Human Resources by day, she loves the opportunity to spend a few hours each evening being creative. Vacation memories feature pretty heavily in Kat’s scrapbooking pages, as do her son and “daughter” (of the four-legged furry kind). Kat has quite the sense of humor (she “blames” her father for this), which she incorporates into her journaling and memory-keeping.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Tutorial Tuesday at The Digital Press! Today, I will be showing you some fun ways you can use your own digital kits to create custom journal cards.

You can really stretch your digital stash by making your own custom pocket cards with the various pieces included in the digital kits. Even if the kit comes with cards already, you can still create your own customized cards with photo editing software and digital papers, brushes, and elements. Getting creative with your supplies and making cards not only stretches your kit, but it adds a personal touch to your projects.

Let’s get started!

First, choose your canvas size. In Photoshop (PS) or Photoshop Elements (PSE), you will select File –> Open New File …and then a screen will pop up where you can enter your desired canvas size. Change pixels to inches, if necessary, and then select your size. I went with 3×4 for my canvas…

Now pick a kit, and start adding items to your blank canvas. Yes, it’s that easy! 🙂

EXAMPLE 1

For the following card, I picked the new May 2017 TDP Designer Collab collection, Day Planner, to make my card. I added in a sticker, brush, flair, and another heart sticker. It was so quick to make… and looks awesome. Here is a screenshot with my 3×4 canvas and all the different pieces in the project bin…

EXAMPLE 2

Another example of a card you can make would be a card with separate “striped” sections. This is also really easy!

You can do this by making some rectangle shapes on your canvas, and then clipping digital papers onto those shapes to create the separate pieces. I made each rectangle shape 1.5 inches high and 4 inches wide… and then I clipped some fun patterned papers and solid papers onto those shapes. To do this, you simply place the digital paper in the layer above the rectangle shape in your layers palette (see the right side of the following image)… and then use the “clipping mask” feature (Ctrl-G in PSE, or Ctrl-Alt-G in PS).

After I had my rectangle stripes, I added in a paint splatter, a few embellishments, a word sticker, and a title word art ‘carpe diem’. Also, for the ‘carpe diem’ I changed the color from black to the orange and pink using the eye dropper tool to get the exact colors from the other papers/elements in the kit.

This is how the card looked in PSE with the layers off the right; you can see them in the white boxes…

EXAMPLE 3

Lastly, I also created a fun 4×6 card using the digital brushes from This Life March, which can be found in Juno Designs’ shop at The Digital Press. I used a bunch of the stamps/brushes found in that collection to create a few clusters on my card…

As you can see, it’s so easy to create your own custom cards using photo editing software and the papers, elements, and brushes/stamps you find in your own digital stash! I hope these journal card examples, above, will inspire you to stretch your own kits and use them in new and creative ways!

About the Author  Sabrina is married to a hard-working man and has two rambunctious kids, nicknamed Captain and Sunshine. She spends every free minute creating at her crafty space. Digital layouts, hybrid layouts, project life and just anything memory keeping. She also loves to read, kickbox and go a bike ride.