Digital Downloads

Digital downloads or printables are becoming some of my favourite products to use when crafting. It can really be anything from templates to images to ready-made journaling cards or collage pages to use on your craft projects. What I love about digital products is that they are easy to store and you will never run out of pages for a project. You can always print more. You can also choose the size that you want to use for your project!

• Where do we find printables?
• How to download and print digital printables?
• Where and how to use these digital printables?

Where do we find printables?

There are a lot of websites that sell digital downloadable printables. You can also find some on Etsy. These are some of my favourite digital download sites and Etsy stores:

• Make in Wonder Shop – Our brand new online shop with beautiful printables with original artwork by  Art with Nicolene. There is always a free download with every new set of printables. For the latest news about new designs, special offers and Freebies, Subscribe to our Newsletter!

• The Graphics Fairy – they have a free and a premium (subscription) site. If you subscribe to their newsletter they will send you a free image every week and links to even more images on their free site. The images on their site are mostly vintage.
• Vectoria Designs – They sell complete printable craft packages in their Etsy shop that comes with a youtube tutorial to create a beautiful craft product. Subscribe to their newsletter to get some free samples of their packages. Their images are mostly vintage.
• KBandFriends – They have retro and vintage images in their Etsy shop. I love that they have vintage kids bookcover pages and little retro boxes that you can print and make to use as gift containers or decorations.

Of course, you can also just search for digital crafting downloads or printables!

How to download and print digital printables?

It is usually rather easy and clear what you should do to buy and download the digital printable files.

The most important thing is that you save them in an organised manner so that you can easily find them again.

Also make sure that you are aware of the terms of use of the specific site or shop. Some of the printables I have bought can only be used for personal projects. Others, like the Make in Wonder Shop, allows you to use the designs on physical products that you can sell. The Graphics Fairy also allows limited use of the digital files to create new digital files with some specific guidelines.

As users of these digital files, it is important that we don’t just share them with everyone, rather share the link!

I like to use my free Silhouette Studio Software or Microsoft Powerpoint to print my digital files in the correct sizes. Some files are PDF files and for that you can still use the Silhouette Studio software or the PDF reader that you use on your device. Often the biggest setting you must change is to use A4 or Letter size paper, depending on the properties of the printable and the size of the paper or cardstock you use.

Also make sure that the print quality setting on your printer properties page is set to the desired setting. Sometimes you want something to print out lightly and then you will use the DRAFT setting. I usually use the BEST quality setting when printing the digital downloadable files to make sure the colour is the closest to the original colour.

Depending on what I am going to use it for, I usually print my printables on smooth white 160gsm card. This is like scrapbooking paper. If your printer allows, you can even print on thicker cardstock like the 216 gsm that is the thickness of the plain cardstock that we usually use in scrapbooking, but this is often too thick to use on top of a cardstock page together with a couple of other papers. It is also harder to fussy cut elements from this thickness of cardstock.

When I am creating a journal, like my Fairy Book, I use normal copy paper (80 gsm) to print the main pages on. This gives a more book-like feel to the book. In my Fairy Book I have also printed some of the pages on vellum for a more magical see-through look. Sometimes I also print on glossy paper to create a specific feel to an embellishment, like a seed packet. If you want to create stickers with the designs, you can even print on printable sticker paper or vinyl!

The possibilities are endless, limited by the size and type of printer you have!

*Just remember that the quality of the printed pages/designs will depend on your printer settings, printer ink and the paper/cardstock that you print on.*

My two devices has different print settings. This affects the print quality as follows:

Where and how to use these digital printables?

Digital printables can be used in endless different ways. It can be used as background pages on cards, scrapbooking pages and journals, basically any kind of craft project! Depending on the design, you can print it and use parts of it to create a paper collage page. Some elements can be used as embellishments on your projects.

Even the cover page of my Fairy Book was a digital printable printed and transferred to fabric!

You can also find templates in the form of digital downloads, for instance a template for a tag or an envelope.

One of the biggest benefits of digital printables is that you can print it over and over again. You will never run out of your favourite piece of paper!