What:
A cute dreaming puppy for Gerda Steiner’s August challenge.
How:
This card started with a single thought: this snoozing puppy needs a place to curl up and the Avery Elle furry friends set has the perfect cushion for him. But that means creating a mask of a digital stamp and I daren’t risk putting masking paper through our inkjet printer…
My original idea was to turn this into a Christmas card and have the puppy snoozing in front of a Christmas tree, but as I was browsing through my digi stamps I spotted this “make a wish” digi, which was a freebie with Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine a while ago.
I use Affinity Designer on the Mac to size digital stamps and add any additional elements. The first task was to measure the cushion stamp (as that is the one element I couldn’t change the size of), make a placeholder rectangle to represent it and then build the layout around it. The dream thought bubble was made with shapes built into the app. When I was happy with the layout I printed it out on watercolour paper.
Next I needed to create a mask for the puppy. I recently bought a MiniSun A4 LED lightpad, which is perfect for tracing printed digital stamps onto masking paper. I made the mask, masked the puppy and stamped the cushion.
With the layout finally complete I coloured it with the real brush pens. The only place where I used any water to blend the colour was on the dream bubble.
I didn’t have a plan for the rest of the card, but, looking at the finished colouring, I knew I would have to do something fairly drastic. The amount and shape of the white space left on the panel was overwhelming. I liked the image, just not on that space. So I took the plunge and fussy cut it out.
A quick riffle through my paper pads and I found a background that would sit nicely behind the pup, with the glittery tape to border it. These were cut to size and stuck to the card base.
I glued the puppy down flat, but popped the dream bubble up on some foam dots. The, almost, final step was to add some glossy accents to the dream items.
As I often do, I looked at the finished card and felt that it needed something else, but I didn’t want to start sprinkling sequins around or do anything that would steal too much focus from the puppy. After distracting my brain with a short break, I came up with the idea of adding the trail of puppy paw prints across the background.
Supplies:
- stamps:
Avery Elle – furry friends - digital stamps:
Gerda Steiner – snoozing puppy
Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine – make a wish - inks:
Ranger – archival – jet black
Avery Elle – kraft - Zig Clean Colour Real Brush pens:
puppy – 071, 062, 064
mouse – 090, 091, 021
cushion – 040, 041, 045, 050, 023
bone – 071, 062, 064
ball – 022, 023, 060
make a wish – 031, 036, 042
dream cloud – 091, 302 - paper and card:
Daler-Rowney – watercolour paper – 190gsm (90lb)
Bo Bunny – paper pad – enchanted garden collection - miscellaneous:
Inkadinkado – stamping mask paper
Paperchase – glitter tape – silver
Crafty Rat 