Polkadoodles People - Fifth Birthday Celebration and Free Digital Stamps

My friend Enfys is a very talented card maker with a wonderful gift of observation and a great sense of humor.  We have only met in person a couple of times (once in LA and once in Germany) but each time it was an adventure !  Enfys is one of the original members of the Polkadoodles design team and this year marks their fifth anniversary. 

In celebration of this birthday, Nikky Hall (the owner of Polkadoodles) has drawn adorable digital stamps of each of the original five team members.  You can get these images, along with 26 different digital backgrounds absolutely FREE - don't you love a blog hop where everyone is a winner? 

I tried some digital coloring - it's fun to do on images with black outlines like this.  I just need to decide on colors for the suitcase and shopping bags!

Just start at Enfys' blog, Going Buggy and then go to each of the other four blogs to find out how to collect all five sets.  Be sure to leave a comment at each blog to have a chance to win a CD with more great images and papers.  Click HERE to start with Enfys' blog hop post and follow the links to the other blogs in her post.  If you have a blog, you can spread the word with a post and link up for a chance to win a big bundle of goodies!

I couldn't wait to try out these adorable images and I know you will love them too  Each one has so much personality and, while I haven't met the other women, Enfys looks exactly right - with her suitcase and shopping bags and the two flags for the US and UK (she used to have a second home in Florida).

I decided to try a print and cut of the images  - the first one I've done since the Silhouette software was upgraded.  The images are very easy to trace and offset - so much easier than hand cutting around all of the nooks and crannies.  The new version of Silhouette Studio does not have the cross-hatching warning all around the page when you add the registration marks.  I was trying to fit all five images on one sheet of letter sized cardstock but I allowed two of the images to stray too close to the edges.

When I cut these, three of the images were fine but two have areas that weren't cut.  I "might" be able to hand trim the gaps but it is better to just keep things within the lines and avoid this situation.

You just need to connect the lines to see which areas are "out of bounds" and make sure that everything will cut properly.  I made these images slightly smaller (about 3 3/4 inches tall) and then I was able to fit all five within the boundaries.

Here are the five images.  I used an offset of .075 inches to get a nice thin border around each image.  I like the way this looks and it also helps make the cuts less complicated. 

On very irregular edges like the hair and the fringe of the scarf, an offset is the best way to avoid tearing the delicate details.  The original image is on the left, the trace in the middle and the offset image on the right.  Once the offset is created, be sure to group the image and the outline together - then you can easily resize them at the same time.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I hope you had fun during the National Scrapbooking Celebrations - there are more sales and celebrations all month long, so keep an eye out for them.  Did you do some crafting this weekend?

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