Happy Tails

Hello, Crafters.

Yesterday morning I told you I had an idea for today’s card, and I’m so, so pleased it worked out! My idea was to make the dog in the Happy Tails Stamp Set a dalmation, but I wasn’t sure if the second stamp had enough black marks. As it happened, there weren’t enough marks but it was very easy to draw extra marks on. Before I started to add the extra marks, I Googled dalmations to check if there are any areas where they don’t have these markings. I was surprised to see, that in nearly all the photographs shown, they had white tails; no markings! I could only see two dalmations that had black marks on their tails!  This gave me the confidence to go ahead, and add more black marks to my dalmation, but I decided to leave the tail plain white!As the dog is black and white, I decided my top layer was going to be a black and white design from the Botanical Butterfly Designer Series Paper (DSP). I created the dog first so I could see whch design he went with best. Talk about lucky, he looked best on the design I hoped he would; the gingham! All the images I’ve used for this card are from the Happy Tails Stamp Set!  I particularly like the collar stamp, but I stamped it without the two little dots that hang down. Looking at the catalogue, the dots are there to hang the heart on, but I think the heart looks too big for it. Besides, I had already decided to add a black heart above the doorway of the kennel! I still had one of the red bows sitting on my desk, that I’d stamped and fussy cut for yesterday’s card. I think it sits on the collar beautifully.

I decorated the sentiment, either end, with a bone, because they are in direct line of view for the dog. The expression on his face is definitely saying “yes please!” The bones were very easy to fussy cut, except they are quite small! When I stamped the kennel, it didn’t have any lines to mark the outside walls or the door frame. They are built into the second stamp which colours the kennel – see the photograph of the kennel that I adhered inside the card (below). The only images that get punched out are the dog and the heart. Most of the kennel is easy to fussy cut, but it’s a bit fiddly doing the roof. If you draw the line at that kind of fussy cutting, I imagine you could just cut a straight line. If you do it like this and you end up with white areas, paint over them using your Basic Black Marker Pen!

The black sparkly ribbon I’ve used was in the Christmas catalogue, but has now retired! There is a ¼” black and silver ribbon in the new Spring/Summer catalogue, page 43; there’s also a ½” black satin ribbon on page 201 in the annual catalogue. If neither of those appeal to you, try using either white or red ribbon! I finished the front of my card by adding one Red Rhinestone on bow, and then three in each corner, just like I did to another recent card.

That’s about it from me today. I hope yu have a lovely day, and I look forward to being back toorrow. In the meantime, happy crafting.

JanB. xx