Gone Wild for Digi Stamps Tutorial (Part 1)

	Here is the tutorial of my card that I blogged earlier. Just in case anyone was waiting for it here and didn’t realise that I had already put it on my Craft Blog a few days earlier.  It uses a grand total of 4 different digi stamps from 4 different suppliers and a sunset photo that I took from my window. Supplies: Flower Girl by Victoria Case Garden Gate by Dustin Pike Daisy Crazy by Sketching Stamper Digi Stamps Fall Leaves by The Digi Shack Author’s own, a photograph of the setting sun from my window.
How to prepare the Digistamps to make a Composition.
	First purchase a digi stamp or use a freebie that you find on the web and save this to your computer.  I then use a Photo Editing Programme, Paint.Net that is free to download and I open the image in the editing programme. Layers > Import from File > locate the image you want to use highlight it and then > Open. This will have the effect of opening the digi image in a layer in the programme so that you can start to manipulate it.
This is one of the windows that you will find open in the standard screen view when you open the package.  You can turn these on and off to get more space for drawing if you want to, but for now we need to see the different “Layers”. I am assuming that you know how to use layers in a manipulation package.  The concept is quite simple.  The image on the topmost layer is the image that you see on the top of the composition.  What	comes below, is hidden by the topmost layer.  A but like decoupage or real life. You can’t see through objects unless they are transparent. The layer that is titled “Background” starts off white, but in this picture you can see that I have made it sky blue.  We need a layer that is not white to help us see where we need to delete the background of the image making areas transparent.  Once the background to the image is transparent we need another colour other than white or black to shine through to show us where we have been and where we need still to go.
I used the colour pallet in the “Colour” window and chose the blue square from the bottom pick list of colours.  You can use any colour you like as long as it is not white or black.	Choose the Paint Bucket tool (the one with a square around it in this picture).  Click onto the “Background” layer with this Paint Bucket tool and the whole page will be filled with the blue colour (or whatever colour you chose).  In the end, this layer will be deleted as we only need it as a visual aid for the next process.
This is the effect you are looking for.	Go to the “Layers Window”, and select the layer with your image on it because we are now going to be working on this layer.  You can tell that you are in the correct layer because it is highlighted with dark blue in the Layers Window.
	Now chose the Magic Wand tool (the one that has a square box round it in this photo) and click on the white area of the image that you want to make transparent.  You will see some running ants round the selected area and you want to remove that selected area to make it transparent by hitting the delete button.
	Once you remove the white background of the image by hitting delete, it becomes transparent, and the blue layer that you made earlier shines through the transparent layer and becomes your visual aid to show which areas you have done and which are still to be done.  If the background layer was white – well, yes, you’ve got it, it will be the same colour as the colour you have just removed and you would not be able to tell easily where to go next. I find it helpful this way, but there are other methods which you will learn or fall across as you continue to learn for yourself.
	Continue deleting areas until you are happy and then do the same for the other elements that you would like to use for your composition.
	You will want to hide the daisy stalks behind the bushes but in front of the fence, so it is necessary to have a layer of the white area of bushes from Dustin’s image to use as a mask to get the effect that you are after. I select the two white areas by holding down the Ctrl key which makes running ants round both areas, then I invert the selection (Ctrl+I) and press delete to leave me with the white I am looking for.
How to Compose the Scene using the Layers Option within the Photo Editing Programme
Now it is time to compose your scene, since you have all your elements with transparent backgrounds, anything in the resulting background will shine through the gaps as if you are looking through the object for example the wooden fence or the prongs of the rake.  Keeping each element on its own layer gives you the flexibility to move it about if you change your mind and place the element in a different place on your composition without affecting the rest of the scene and without the need to rub out or re-draw the digi stamp.	Layer 2 (This contains two copies of the Daisy Crazy digi stamp)
Layer 3 (this contains two more copies of the Daisy Crazy digi stamp but they are positioned so that they overlap the daises that are on Layer 2)	This is only a digital way of doing what you would be doing with rubber stamping and masking, but with the added advantage that you can resize your image to fit the perspective of the scene you are trying to make.  And you can move things about without having to re-do everything you have done before. These layers show that I am adding the flowers on the left hand side of the composition.
	You can see that the composition is building up nicely with the daisies in front of the fence, superimposed on each other intertwining with each other as if they would in real life.  This is all achievable because you have made the transparent background to the daises in the first place.  The daises consist of about 3 layers with one or two copies of the Daises Crazy digi stamp on each layer. However, you can also see that the stalks are showing in the bushes which we do not want.  This will be rectified when we use the “bushes” layer that we made up earlier.
	Remember the bushes layer?  This is now going to come into its own, you must put this layer at the top of the stack of layers of your project, so that it covers the stalks from the daisies’ layers below it.  This is a better way of masking them, then rubbing out the stalk which you could do, but if you decide to alter the placement of daisies to make them taller for instance, you move the selected daisy digi stamp on the selected layer and do not need to redraw any stalks that you may have rubbed out with the rubber tool earlier.
	Almost there.  I now have a composition that I am happy with.  The rake is leaning up against the fence there are two boarders of daisies growing either side of the fence.  I used 7 copies of the original image of daisies.  Because the background is transparent, they all intermingle with each other nicely giving a natural look. However, I don’t like the sky.  I could print out the composition and paint in the sky, but all those fiddly bits behind the fence posts and daises will probably drive me mad.  Now here is where I use a photograph of a sunset to give the feel of a good day’s work done.  A bit of gardening and a bit of clearing up. …
How to use a Photograph for your Background.
	When you are happy with your composition you will need to make all the separate elements into one.  To do this, you need to merge all the layers that you have just created effectively making a new digi stamp but of a composition you have constructed using different digi stamps. To do this in Pain.net, find the top most layer in the “Layers” window and click your mouse to make sure it is activated.  Then press Ctrl+M so that you merge the layer you are on with the layer below it to make it one.  If you make a mistake press Ctrl+Z to undo the last command and backtrack.
	You now have your composition on one layer and the photograph on the other.  Select the layer with your composition on it and select the composition so with the rectangle select tool and choose the Move selected pixels tool to grab your composition to be able to move it about on the photograph.
	I looked at the different colours of the sky and how it affected the background through the fence.  When I was happy with the placement I cropped the whole project to remove the waste and to be able to print the image without the need for using ink that was not needed.
	This is the final effect that I was after.  I can now print this out, and colour in the white spaces using my preferred method, and have a beautiful sky that is how nature intended it. I then decoupaged the image of the Flower Girl by Victoria Case to show who did all the work in the garden.