I did it! I did it! Yeah, yeah, yeah...Some sewing here tonight!

Remember the scene where Marlin clownfish (from the Nemo movie) singing this tune (well, not this exact song) after he defeats the angler fish and it gets stuck in the diver's mask??? Well, I am singing this same tune about my Janome Mini sewing machine. I finally opened up my Janome mini sewing machine last night. I had been intimidated to use it for quite awhile since I do mostly hand sewing and very clumsy with a sewing machine. After drooling over some of the fabulous creations on SCS and blogs, I purchased one just before the holidays for a great price ($39.99 at Hancock Fabrics). My sister had ordered some altered composition notebooks from me to give to some friends and instead of paying me some $$$, I asked her to pick one of these babies up for me since I don't have a Hancock Fabrics nearby . I picked it up from her during the holidays while we were visiting. I guess I could have bought one online, but to get free shipping I would have to buy two of them (c'mon, let's face it...who has time to find someone else to buy the extra sewing machine...not me!)

Well, onto the the cards I was brave enough to make last night...I proceeded to read GinaK's tutorial and followed every step (check it out on her blog - it is a 4 part series of instructions, very detailed and she provides some great pics so you can see the process of threading and all the way to the sewing part). Here is a link to the basics from Gina: Sewing: Threading the Machine... Remember to go back to her sidebar on the left to read the rest of the tutorials.

The moment you have been waiting for...TA DA!!!!

The image is a freebie from Pollycraft Designs (located in the UK). I had been browsing online for some digi images to purchase and found a couple of sites offering freebies. Check out their stock of dowloadable images as well as stamps. I've only done one hybrid card before using a digi image that sort of reminds me of a stampingbella (seen here). Digi stamps are the rave right now...

Besides Pollycraft Designs, here are some other places to check out for some freebies to try out before making the plunge:

Squigglefly
Victoria Case Designs
Pink Petticoat (UK)
melstampz (Mel freely shares lots of digi images she has created herself and she also provides links to other resources on her blog - she is awesome!)

Other digi sites to check out:

Sketching Stamper (UK)
River City Rubber Works
My Grafico

You can buy whole sheet images for a fraction of the price of unmounted stamp sets. Some of the neat things about digi stamps are that they are sizeable and reversible. I've tried to print off a couple of images on regular white Georgia Pacific cardstock (110 lb) and they print off clear. Mel from (melstampz) suggests after printing to emboss the image as soon as you take if off the printer you can use any kind of coloring medium on it. Since I don't have any copics (hope to own some one day *wishful thinking) and only have the SU markers available, I did not emboss the image, I just went ahead and colored it in using markers and an aquapainter (watercoloring is my favorite coloring technique). A little of the ink was mixing in with the color but it was very little and not noticeable at all. With watercoloring, you can achieve various shades in your image versus just using markers on the image (SU markers tend to be streaky). Because I am such a cheapskate, I don't use watercolor paper like you are supposed to but I have achieved a lot of great colored images on most of my cards. I'll have to try watercoloring with SU watercolor paper one of these days since I've heard that this paper is the best one to use when watercoloring. But for now, I will stick with my good ol' Georgia Pacific.

Now, I still prefer to use regular rubber or clear acrylic since you can use different colors for the images if you don't want to waste printer ink. But it is still a great bargain to get some inexpensive images for your cards and projects.

stamps: studio g $1 stamp for sentiment, free digi stamp from pollycrafts designs) paper: white cs, memory block inspirations dp ink: printer ink for digi image, positively pink, old olive, real red, creamy caramel, chocolate chip accessories: scotch foam mounting tape, aquapainter, polkadot olive green satin ribbon, martha stewart lace border punch, sewing machine, aleene's paper glaze for the hearts card size: 5.5 square card