Working With Digital Print Outs in Card Making

Purchasing Digital Stamps, or Digi Stamps as they arefirst before launching into a larger project which could
commonly known, is a great way of building a libraryget ruined. Older InkJet printers seem to cause the
of images and is much more cost effective thanmost problems but if yours is newer do not
purchasing lots of rubber and acrylic stamps. Manyautomatically assume that it will work well.
card makers and scrap bookers love to colour DigitalSimply choose the paper type that you plan to work
images using Copic Marker pens but this can createwith and print out an image onto the paper. First of
some problems depending on which type of printerall choose a corner of the image to work straight on
you have.with your pens - if it does not cause "bleeding" your
Some printer inks work really well with Copicprinter should be fine to use. I would recommend
markers, some work if you heat set the ink beforeusing a light coloured pen so you can easily see if the
you start to colour, some just need to "rest" beforeimage edge bleeds.
colouring and some just do not work well at all andIf it does bleed then print out the same image again
the ink will bleed.on another part of the paper and this time let it rest
As a rule of thumb Copic Marker pens will work wellfor a few minutes before again trying to colour If
with any digi images printed out on a laser printer orthis again does not work, reprint once more and then
a normal standard photocopier. Laser printers andheat set the image using a heat gun before starting
photocopiers work using a toner based system whichto colour.
means that the image is printed onto the paper byIf you find your printer ink will not work with the
the machine actually melting the toner onto theCopic pens after trying all these methods then you
paper. This means that the ink in the Copic Markerscan consider still using the Copics but stopping your
which is an alcohol ink will not bleed into the imagecolouring just short of the printed edge which you
lines.would normally be colouring up to. If you are then
However most home printers are still InkJet printersnot satisfied with the finished work I would just
and the ink formula in different models can differ.accept that you need to look to another medium for
The only way you can be sure that your printer iscolouring in your Digi-Stamps!
suitable to use with Copic Markers is by testing it out