Never Say Never

"Orangutans are skeptical of changes in their cages..." ~ Simon & Garfunkel

Do you know that song by Simon and Garfunkel, At the Zoo?  I love it, and the line above is my very favorite, probably because it describes me perfectly!  When I first heard about so-called digital stamps I was extremely skeptical.  How could images printed out from your computer be "stamps"?!  I was sure I wouldn't want to get anywhere near that whole new fasciation within the stamping community.

But, I was wrong (clearly it almost always takes me a while to warm up to new things; see lyric above).  I read a description of these digital images and I realized that there are several real advantages to them: they take up zero space in your craft room; you can adjust the size to make the image as big or small as you like; you can (I'm guessing) rotate and flip the images; and finally, a digital image costs much, much less than a stamp.  Oh, and of course there's the factor of not having an inky stamp to clean up, and eliminating the chance of stamping a blurry or incomplete image.  Pretty convincing reasons to give digital images a try, don't you think?

I made the card above using Operation Write Home's Sketch #127 and a free digi (as they are sometimes called) from Doodle Pantry.  I was very happy to be able to try out a free digi before deciding to re-adjust my thinking.  I'm a believer now.  I printed out four of the ducks onto a piece of cardstock - I realize now I made them a bit too big for a standard 4.25 x 5.5" (A2) card, but I'll manage.  Next time I can always make them smaller (wheee!).  I colored the duck with my Prismacolor pencils; not sure my printer toner would do well with a wet media like markers or paint.  That's okay with me.  The patterned papers are of course scraps from my stash.  Now that I can easily look through my scraps I am using them up quickly; I love it.

I'm sure I will continue to buy and enjoy regular stamps, but now I've got more options when I want a certain kind of image. I can't wait to go shopping for some digis!

But I'm still not calling calling them "digital stamps."