Coloring of Digital Stamps - Tutorial

To stamp with a color other than black you may change the color of your digital stamp in MS Word. I am going to show you how to do it in this tutorial. I am using Microsoft Word 2010, if you have a different version it may look a little different than my screen shots, but it should work similarly.     

1. Open a new blank Word document and “Insert” your picture as I instructed you to do in the tutorial entitled, “Using MS Word to Print Digital Stamps”.

2. Adjust the size of the art fit the article you are planning on using the digital stamp on. You may wish to change the margins to allow for a larger printing area if you are planning to use the digital stamp on something large like a tee shirt, tote bag or if you want to save a little paper by having the image printed near the top left side of the paper.

3. Click on the tab “Page Layout” and then “Margins”. You will see a drop down menu. At the bottom of the drop down menu is click on “Custom Margins”

4. This will bring up a new dialog box where you can change the margins from 1” to ¼” by highlighting the 1” and typing in .25, for the Top, Left, Bottom and Right. When you are done click “OK” at the bottom of the dialog box.

5. Notice the rulers at the top and left side of the page tells us that the image is now a full 8”wide. If you do not want to print the digital stamp that large you may adjust the image down by dragging the little round circles on the corners of the image. Do not drag the image by using the little boxes in the center of the lines, it will distort the image.

6. Make sure “Picture Tools” or “Format” tabs are showing, If you don’t see the Format or Picture Tools tabs, make sure that the image is selected, i.e.: the blue box is around it . You may have to double-click the image to select it and open the Format tab.

7. Click on "Color".

8. A drop down menu appears. Choose the section that says, “Recolor”. You will notice as you move your mouse pointer over any of the affects you will see a preview of what the image will look like with that effect applied before you click the one that you want.

9. If you are not satisfied with the color selection you can always choose “More Variations”which brings up more color choices to choose from.

10. Don’t worry if you choose a color that colors the background as well as the line art. As you can see by the picture below I have chosen blue, but it also colored the background. The next picture discribes what you can do to remedy that problem.

11. You can clear the background color out and retain the line art color with the “Set Transparent Color” tool.

12. Choose the tool and then click the background and the color will magicly disappear.

13. To remove the color that you have added to the digital stamp and return to a black stamp and white paper, without effecting other changes you have made to the image, click “No Recolor”. Now you can start again playing with the colors anew.

14. When you finally get the image the way you like, don’t forget to save your file with a new name.