I'm so excited today!  Mr. UPS man has been bringing me all kinds of fun packages recently:  orders from my recent workshops, backorders that have now been cleared out, several cases of brand-new 2010/2011 catalogs, and  then today…… this card that I've been so anxious to see that I've hardly been able to concentrate on anything else!

Ok, I guess you'll have to understand the background before appreciating how anxiously I've been waiting to see this card.  Here goes:

My son and his wife became new parents this spring.  Unfortunately, they live a whole day's drive away – over the mountains and in another state – so I am destined to not be able to watch this special little boy grow up day-to-day.  But they visited here over Memorial Day weekend and I snapped some adorable pictures that looked just fine in the view window of my camera.  Unfortunately, after they all headed home and I hurried to download my precious pictures, I discovered quite to my dismay that most of them were out of focus.  Oh NO!!! How in the world that happened still remains a mystery, as the camera was set on auto-focus.  But at any rate I was sorely disappointed with these once-in-a-lifetime shots.

Well, I went to work on the photos with my several-years-old version of Photoshop Elements, and while I wasn't able to make great pictures out of poor ones, I eventually decided they were improved "a bit".  Or at least as long as they're kept small, they look better anyway. And so *I* felt a little bit better. 

Ok, fast-forward to Father's Day.  My son works in the sports world, so I was totally tickled when Stampin' Up! released some sports-oriented digital downloads recently.  I had quickly scooped up the alphabet and numbers images that suggested sports themes, and figured I'd combine those together with some of the recent pictures I'd taken – to make him a custom "1st Father's Day" card with Stampin' Up!'s awesome "My Digital Studio" digital crafting program that I just adore. 

So I carefully worked to create the strong masculine look I was after – pulling colors from the photos I was using, as well as generally thinking in terms of the sports team for which he works.  I had a blast fiddling around with the simple, but strong design…..  until it was time to print it.

The size I'd chosen for my card is a 5 x 7.  Nice and big for a masculine card. I was happy enough with its look on my monitor screen, but alas, my printer had other ideas. It absolutely *refused* to reproduce the details of what I'd just designed.  When printed on my home printer (only 1 year old, btw), all the fine details of the photos as well as the graphics images were simply not there – and I was again mighty disappointed.  Finally I realized that time was growing short, and I was going to HAVE to submit my design to Stampin' Up!'s printer – but that would take a lot longer than I'd allowed. 

Luckily, there's a feature in My Digital Studio where you can export your artwork to a jpg format.  I make use of that option fairly regularly, and so I pressed it into service that day, too – and was able to fashion an "ecard" of sorts, adding a message and got that emailed in time for Father's Day - while I uploaded the full artwork to our online printer.  I told my son his "real card" would come later; quite a bit later.  And then I began to wait…………..

Until today…… when I finally received the "official" printed card!  And let me tell you I am OVER THE MOON happy I decided to do that!  And at the last minute I also had had the idea to have TWO copies printed – one to mail and one to keep for myself.  And boy, am I ever glad I made that decision, too!  'Cuz I just can't stop looking at it.  Mostly because the guys in the pictures are both mighty special to me, of course….. but also because it just looks so darn good!  The detail that was completely absent when printed on my own machine is all there, the colors are a perfect match to what I'd chosen, and the skintone is as good as can be expected given that I'd started the whole thing with less than perfect photos to begin with. 

Now of course there's never a substitute for the real thing, so next time you're here, I hope you'll ask to see this card in real life. (Along with samples of other MDS cards that I've had printed through Stampin' Up!, too.)  But in the meantime, I just had to scan and upload – and share it here. 

AND give a great big thumbs-up to Stampin' Up!'s printing service!  They came through with flying "colors" – and saved the whole project!