New Release at The East Wind

Every Monday and Friday, there's a brand new image at The East Wind and today it's my pleasure to introduce you to Aurora 'Explore'.  For some reason the image reminded me of the tv show "Warehouse 13" so I had to go with a Steampunk vibe, adding Tim Holtz metal bits and bobs as well as the fab sentiment.  The gears in the background DP are from the DCWV Tattered Time Stack, but I've done something different for the background of the image, itself.

I used the NB (no background) png version of the image and originally planned to use digi paper behind.  But after I'd colored her, there was still the dilemma of what to do with the big white oval surrounding her.  I'd spent a fair amount of time with my Copics, along with some pencils for the mouse fur and metallic pen for her glasses and clasp on her cap, and even shined the lenses up with Glossy Accents so I didn't want to risk messing it up with trying to color a funky background.  I could fussy cut her,which I actually did do, but not before printing her again using the totally transparent png version over the cool digi paper from the Gecko Galz Steampunk digi pack, so I would not lose the loose strands of hair floating about on the image.  Clear as mud?

Well here's a clip from my Printmaster Program showing the difference between the NB (no background) png format with the digi paper behind, and the transparent png format with the digi paper cropped to fill in the oval behind Aurora.  Of course I did not print it like this.  Ultimately, I chose not to use digi paper behind the image and printed the image to color separately.  Then I printed the transparent png version over the digi paper background.  I fussy cut the colored version from the oval she's peering from, but she was easily glued right over the transparent version (in this case, cut with the oval background) and the loose hairs still showed.  BTW, what looks like camera flash glare in the picture above is actually part of the background digi paper and was intended.  I just didn't line it up the same in this illustration.

I hope this is at least a bit helpful in sorting out the various digi formats and give you some ideas of how to play with your digi stamps and papers.  It's the wee hours of the morning and my brain is a bit foggy so if you've got questions, please let me know.  In the meantime, check out the TEW FB page to see some of my other teamies' version of this cool new stamp.  And our brand new challenge, "Winter Blues", launched yesterday.  Come join in!

I'm adding this to the DLArt January Linky party, the Outlawz Twisted Thursday ATG with optional eyelets or brads, TTRCD Jan 13-19 ATG, Just Inspirational Add a Background Image, Through the Purple Haze Anything New to You (brand new image, release TODAY!) and Crafty Hazelnut's January Patterned Paper challenge.