Using clip art in cards

First things first, there is nothing wrong with using clip art in any of your projects.  There are a lot of beautiful images available on software and online.  Take full advantage of them!  But let's be clear...to stamp something, means you have to physically apply some sort of medium like ink or paint onto an object and then apply it to paper.  There is no such thing as a digital stamp.  If you print it out, it's clip art.  If it weren't for clip art, I might not have gotten into card making at all!

I really wanted to join in the fun of the Altered Pages Challenge this month.  The theme is shoes.  I love girly cards and thought this one would be fun.  I started going through my stamp drawer to find the perfect image and discovered that I really don't have a shoe stamp that would be a good focal point on a card.  The stamps I own are just too small.  So I went on Google and searched "shoe coloring page" and found this really cute pair of wooden shoes.

I pasted the image into my Print Shop program and printed them out.  I colored the shoes with a coconut-colored Sharpie and then went over it with a colored pencil.  The flowers were painted with Sakura's 3D Crystal Lacquer, which were colored with Terri Sproul's Mixers in Shimmer Rose and Shimmer Green.  The large flowers at the top were embellished with Dew Drops from The Robin's Nest.

To make the flower border, I cropped out the largest flower from the shoe and printed it in various sizes.  I also flipped the image so some would be facing the other way.

 I can't decide if I prefer the scan or the photo so here's both!

Here's another fun card I made with clip art.  This one was for my husband's birthday.  He's a real car guy, but I don't have much in the way of stamps.  It gave me a great opportunity to highlight some of the car embellishments I found, though!

The background is a paint chip.  I love pink and black together and the gray helped blend the buttons and brads into the design.

If you're like me and you want one of every stamp in your collection that's fine.  But if you need an image and you can't find the perfect stamp or can't afford to stockpile them then go find yourself some beautiful clip art.  The joy is in creating!

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