Tutorial on How to Turn Digital Stamps into Chalkboard Style Designs and Cool DT Samples!

Hi Everyone, I'm so excited that I tried my chalkboard idea and it works!  Now this may be old news to some people but I never tried turning our plain black digital designs into white on a chalkboard background until last night and look how cool it looks!  Imagine these designs from our Photo Studio Digital Stamp Set on the corner of a dark photo or you could make cool photo mats and scrapbook pages. 

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 I decided to do a tutorial and used our Christmas Wishes Digital Stamp Set.  I made the instructions super basic so anyone can try it. I used Photoshop Elements but Paint.net from www.getpaint.net is a FREE Image Editing Program that supports PNG files and has a INVERT Tab, which you need to be able to invert the designs to change them from black to white. PNG files just means that the lettering or design is cut out and transparent so you can place it on a dark background and invert each design to change them to white. All of our digital stamps are PNG files (which open just like a regular jpg). 

Now we need chalkboard backgrounds - UPDATE: available now with both with black and green 12" x 12" papers for .99 cents for the set in our craftyvintagegirl.com store. The 12" x 12" size offers more versatility so you can crop or shrink the size for cards and tags or create big projects like large signs and scrapbook pages! 

To turn black digital stamp designs into white on dark backgrounds like this chalkboard paper just follow the instructions on these sample shots. Basically you just need to 'invert' each stamp design when you place them as shown below.

It's easy to do and remember - if you make a mistake just go under EDIT and click on the BACK Button. Nothing is permanent until you save it - but be sure to give your project a new name so you don't loose your plain background.

 You can see on this close up shot it really has the chalkboard look

 You don't have to have a chalkboard background, you can use any dark color, or you can do it the opposite way and place all your black images on a white background and simply click on the INVERT Button (located under the FILTER TAB on the top and then the INVERT is on the drop down menu). After you invert it you may want to play with the contrast 

 If you do it using the above method you will get a really black background which may be perfect for some projects but I love the chalkboard look which is so trendy right now. 

 Here's the same Card Front and Back on the Chalkboard background to compare

Then I used some of the PNG designs from our CD 3, Creating With Vintage Typography.  You can see the INVERT Tab on the Drop Down Menu.

   Gee - can you tell I'm excited and want to play? My head is spinning with ideas!

I would really love to know what you think of this idea and if you have ever used this technique?  It seems so much easier and less fool proof than messing around with white ink and getting a perfect stamped image - especially when using large size designs like these.

Now you have to check out DT Member Sheila Rumney's New Tutorial Using Clipping Masks and see how to add a pattern background to lettering!It looks so great and I had no idea you could do this either.

Also, look at this adorable Christmas card by DT Member Vicki Chrisman using an image from CD 6 Vintage Christmas

Plus, here's a cute card by DT Member Cherry Nelson using an image from our Christmas Creative Scraps

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Thanks so much for your support and feedback, it's truly appreciated!
 
Sandy Redburn
Crafty Secrets

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