Cards

[nonnie]

Thanks to Robin and the 10 point challenge I am becoming a total Hybrid girl!!! I am loving it and making everyone albums for valentines day. I need to make some cards for my friends here before we leave, and this is going to sound crazy but how do you do it? I have never made on that was not stamped ect..
Do you use a special paper? Do you Modgepog or just print out one and fold? HELP!!!!!!! How do you embellish?

[livelys]

Are they V-Day cards you want to make? 'Cos if you're planning to make quite a few, then make it as easy on yourself as possible and make a batch of very similar ones

Did you see Laren Reid's Love Day Cards?



These would make your job nice and straight forward. Just print one onto A4 card and cut 'n fold the card to size, or print several on a single sheet of A4 and then cut and attach each to the front of a card blank. If you peek at the example photos in the shoppe, one of Lauren's team has already done something similar.

Then if you want to make them extra special, you could add a little sparkle with self-adhesive gems, glitter or maybe add some ribbon. You could even layer some of the images, like the birds or hearts, by printing an extra image, cut the bird etc. out and then layering it on your card with sticky foam pads for a little 'dimension'!

Does that make sense? Please just say so if it doesn't

[Andrea Gourley]

Hi Nonnie, there are stacks of cards in the Hybrid Babe gallery and the hybrid inpiration gallery. There are tutorials here and here that might help you. It's easy to take the basics from a card and to adapt it to your circumstances by swapping out the papers from Christmas themed to birthday themed, floral to masculine etc. and adding a sentiment can change a card from anniversary to thanks, birthday, baby etc, easily. If you're interested in types of glue check out the hot 4 hybrid blog post from wednesday

Hope this helps

[junebug]

it's easiest to make many similar ones, lol. i am making Chloe's valentines for her class. while they are not hybrid (no printing of papers; strictly physical supplies cause i'm low on ink at the moment). i found some packages of 3X3 cards and envelopes that i just stamped on the front with some cute valentine stamps and colored them in with my new Copic markers and let Chloe fill out the names on the envelopes. i'm making two fancier ones for her teachers but its really easy if you keep it simple!

[JenTapler]

Hi Nonnie - sorry it took me so long to find this thread, but how exciting!! I love it when a digi girl starts getting excited about hybrid!! :-)

What I've noticed about hybrid girls is that everyone sort of has their own way of doing things and their own "style" and you just have to figure out what works best for you. That being said, I'll tell you what I do. I started out as a paper girl and then started dabbling in digi, so I tend to use my printed digi supplies just like I would supplies from my paper stash. Basically, I open up my digi papers in photoshop and "crop" them crudely into a rough size that I think will work for the card I'm making - sometimes I have NO IDEA what my finished card will end up looking like, but I know what size it's going to be (say a standard A2 size - 4.25 x 5.5 inches) and I know that I want to use these 3 digi papers on it, so I just resize and crop my papers in photoshop to 4.25 x 5.5 inches and then drag them onto a single 8.5x11 inch document (with a little white space in between each for trimming) and then print.

I print ALL of my digi stuff on double-sided matte presentation or brochure paper. And - VERY IMPORTANT - I make sure that each time I print I change my printer settings to reflect that I'm printing on this type of paper. I've found that this makes a HUGE difference in the vibrancy and quality of the finished printed stuff.

Once I've printed everything out, I use those printed papers just like I would any other "real" paper in my crafting stash - I cut it with my paper trimmer and physically layer it onto a cardstock base (I don't layer it in photoshop, but do my layering after I've printed and physically trimmed - this is a personal preference of mine because that's my style - I just prefer the way the finished card looks when I do it this way). I add either printed digi embellishments or physical embellishments from my stash (ribbon, buttons, brads, etc) to my liking. I use the same adhesive I'd use on my stamped or handcrafted cards. (Andrea recently did a Hot 4 Hybrid blog post about adhesive). I VERY OFTEN stamp on my hybrid projects. I'm a stamper and I'm on several stamping Design Teams, so I love incorporating stamping into my hybrid projects and my stamped images look just as good on printed digi paper as they do on cardstock. So have fun with your stamps if you've got 'em!!

Can't wait to see what you do!!

Feel free to ask more questions if you get stuck or PM me or any of the other Hybrid Babes - we're all happy to help! We LOVE recruiting newbies over to the "Dark Side"!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!

[bascrapr]

I'm trying to resize my papers to drag onto the 8 1/2 x 11 blank paper. After I resize the papers to 4x5 or so and try to drag them onto the larger paper, they are huge and take up the whole area. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I use PSE 8. Thanks!

[Milmomma]

Originally Posted by bascrapr

I'm trying to resize my papers to drag onto the 8 1/2 x 11 blank paper. After I resize the papers to 4x5 or so and try to drag them onto the larger paper, they are huge and take up the whole area. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I use PSE 8. Thanks!

Check your resolution. A lot of times when you open a standard 8.5x11 it has a resolution of 72, and the papers have resolution of 300.
Just drop the resolution of the paper to 72 and you should have your right sized pattern

[bascrapr]

Thanks! I'll try that.

[JenTapler]

OK, now admittedly I'm not a digi girl, so I'm not even sure how to answer this correctly, but I normally don't "resize" my papers before dragging them onto the 8.5x11 document. Instead, I open a new document that is the approximate size of the piece of paper I want my paper to be cut (say 4x6), then I drag my 12x12 paper onto that. Then I use the little square things in the corners of the paper layer to "shrink" the paper down to the right size so that the pattern is appropriately sized for the size of paper I'm using. Once I have the pattern sized right, then I merge the 2 layers and the new, single merged layer will be the size of the background layer (4x6). I then drag that onto my 8.5x11 blank document and it maintains it's size as 4x6.

I have no idea if that made any sense. Since I'm not a digi girl, I don't know the right "lingo" - LOL. Maybe this would make a good future Hot 4 Hybrid post?? Would you guys find it helpful to see my process for cardmaking from start to finish with screen shots in PSE?? (I use PSE 6, but I think it's all basically the same).

[JenTapler]

Oh, and I don't mess with my resolution. I keep everything at 300. I find that if I change my resolution, the print quality is lower, and I'm not willing to give that up - but that's just my personal preference and may be my printer. Play around and see what works for you.

[Milmomma]

Jen I get what you mean.
It does sound like a good topic!

[ColleenSwerb]

Yes, when I make my cards I start with a PS file of the size I want the final card to be (4.25" x 5.5" usually). I make a mini layout on my card using the shape tools (putting in rectangles, circles, etc) and then clip my papers to the shapes. Then I merge the shape and the paper together, and drag it onto my 8.5 x 11 document.

I also don't change my resolution on anything. My 8.5x11 document is also set to 300dpi, so there's no issue. I would suggest creating the 8.5x11 file in PS and setting it's resoution to 300, instead of lowering the resolution of the pieces.

[bascrapr]

yes- I would love to see your cardmaking techniques with screen shots!

[allboyz]

Originally Posted by Milmomma

Check your resolution. A lot of times when you open a standard 8.5x11 it has a resolution of 72, and the papers have resolution of 300.
Just drop the resolution of the paper to 72 and you should have your right sized pattern

Don't drop the resolution of the paper to 72 dpi.. that is way to low if you are printing! Change the 8.5x11 blank to 300 dpi.
I learned this all the hard way!

[JenTapler]

Originally Posted by bascrapr

yes- I would love to see your cardmaking techniques with screen shots!

great!! It's in the works for a future Hot 4 Hybrid blog post, so be on the lookout!! ;-)