Santa's Turn To Party

I have another Christmas card to show today.... only one more post after this and I'll be done with Christmas 2011 - PROMISE!  I made this one for the staff of one of the swimming pool companies we work with, it is really appropriate for Christmas in Australia, and particularly so for our industry I feel :-)

The image is Santi Beaches (I love clever names!) and he's a digi from Dude Time Doodles.  He looks well relaxed, doesn't he?  He's finished with all that present giving (much of it at our house, I might add!) and is ready to Par-Tay!!!  Totally Papercrafts challenge is "Time To Party" and Crafty Emma's is Party Party Party, so I'm entering there.
I coloured the image with Copics, adding high gloss to Santa's sunnies and his lovely cocktail.  Crazy 4 Challenges has "It's Santa" for their challenge, so I'm entering there too.  I cut  the image panel with Nestabilities Labels 4, Pollycraft has Punch It as its theme, so I'm entering there.  The papers are from Kaisercrafts "Tis the Season collection, the glittery green card and the cord are from my stash (handy hint: melt the ends to stop them fraying...but don't set fire to them, hmmm, the voice of experience, lol).  I made the sentiment on the computer.  Cutie Pie Challenge is to Use a Sentiment, I have so I'm in.
The inside of the card is finished with papers from the front... isn't it always?! lol.
Bizzy Becs and Paper Play Challenges have Christmas challenges running Digi Stamps 4 Joy has "Christmas but no animals" - even though this Santa is a party animal, I'm entering there, lol.  Papertake Weekly "Last" Christmas - as in their last Christmas themed challenge for the year and Charisma Cardz Anything Goes so I'm in there too.
Before I finish this post I thought I'd share one of the ideas I use to ensure my digis are scaled correctly to fit the Nesties I want to use.  In this case, the Labels Four set. I scanned all the dies in each of the sets I have, saved them as .png files in a folder named for that set.  I then open the one I want, add it to my Word document (position it so that it's readily moved around) then add my digi image (which I have also saved as .png files with transparent backgrounds, though you can do it with .jpg files).  Once the two files (Nestie and image) are open, I resize the image (make sure you don't resize the Nestie!) until it fits inside the Nestie, or it has the "bits" hanging over the edge that I want like Santi has in this case.  All that's left to do is delete the picture of the Nestie from the document and print the image.  You know it will fit inside the Nestie, and you know you've left enough room on the page for the Nestie.  I use the same principle for adding sentiments to Nesties.
Well, that's it for today.  I'll be back in a day or so with the very last of my 2011 Christmas cards, until then Happy Crafting, Donna.