paper piecing digital images

I was recently asked how to paper piece digital images with your computer’s printer.  So I thought I’d take a few photos to help explain how it’s done.

For this card I used the July free digital images at Paper Smooches.  (There’s Crystal Effects on the cherries so they’re nice and shiny IRL). 

The cupcake is actually a single image but I deleted the white background and placed 3 cupcakes together using Photoshop Elements.  The middle cupcake was flipped horizontally.  I am not real experienced with PE so I had to play around a bit until I got what I wanted and honestly, I forget exactly how I did it.  LOL.  I’ll have to play some more and write it down next time!  You don’t have to do multiples, though…it would be best to start with a single image.  Keep it simple!

After I had my image the way I liked, I printed my “base” copy onto white cardstock (top of photo).  Then I printed it a second time onto plain white printer paper.  Using double sided temporary tape, I cut some scraps of designer paper and attached them over selected areas of the image on the printer paper.  This was run through the printer a second time to get the parts of the image that I wanted onto the designer paper (bottom of photo).

I repeated this several times until I had all the pieces of designer paper printed with the areas I had selected (photo below).  I chose to paper piece the entire thing but you could paper piece some and color the rest.

Next just cut your pieces out and glue to the “base” image.  It’s really quite easy…I hope you try it!

The layout for this card came from the Designer Drafts #4 (the middle one on the right).  And it was made for the Paper Smooches Sparks Challenge.

digital images- Paper Smooches Cupcake and Thoughtful; paper- white, brown, kraft, dp- Wasabi, Real Red, Kraft, Pretty in Pink; ink- computer printer; accessories- Crystal Effects, Copics for the words, cherry stems, and shadows.