For the Birthday Girl
Celebrating a Furry Friends Special Day
Good day, fellow crafters. Today I am presenting a birthday card I created for a furry friend’s first birthday. She is very a loveable and energetic German Shepard puppy though I think she is now the size of a small horse already. When I saw the German Shepard stamp I used for this image I dropped everything and made a rushed purchase so I could have it in time to create this card. I hope you enjoy.
To create this card I first started with the star of the show because I was so ecstatic to find it. The image on the left is of the Technique Junkies Loyal Friend red rubber stamp that I used for this project. I absolutely love the amount of detail that you get in this stamp, which I did on white cardstock with black ink. Then to make the image look a bit more like a younger dog I used some of my warm gray Copics to mute some of the definition and then a white gel pen to give a bit of shine to the eyes. The studio lighting does give the image above a slightly weird look but if you look in the gallery below you will see a more close-up detail of the the stamped image. I next fussy cut out the image and set it aside.
The next step was to create the background for my focal point. To do this I used a two-part layering stencil from Pretty Pink Posh called Streamers, featured right. I first secured white cardstock to my worksurface and then the first of the stencils. With Altenew ink in UltraViolet, I ink-blended the darker twits of the streamers. Then before I lifted the stencil I used some homemade shimmer spray to give them a touch of sparkle. After giving time for both products to dry I secured the second part of the stencil set and used Altenew ink in Lavender Fields to complete the streamers.
Once all of the inks were dry I used the Pawsome Love die from Kat Scrappiness, featured left, to give a stitch imprint of little paws and hearts onto my background. This turned out so stinking cute, I just love the little toe beans! Using this die does limit the size of its application unless you make modifications to your process so since it cut my background panel to size I decided to go ahead and do some assembly. I took a nice pink piece of cardstock that really coordinates with the purples and trimmed it down to its final dimension, removed the center for use with my sentiment so as to not waste material, and then adhered it to the background panel with double-sided tape. I then adhered the composite to a pre-cut and folded A2 white card base.
To finish up the card I used the Reflections Celebrations stamp set, the first image featured on the right, and some Gina K ink in Bubble Gum Pink to make the little party hat. I felt this gave the card just a bit more whimsy. I then used the Barking Mad stamp set, the second image on the right, from Friskar for the sentiment. I stamped the image in black and then cut it out with a fancy stitched die from my collection and adhered it to the card. Lastly, I added my furry friend and her party hat to the card.
I of course could not stop with just the card as I was super in the zone with this one. As my gift I purchased a PetSmart gift card so to present it, I used some dog-inspired print paper and a gift card envelope die to create an envelope which you can see in the card image at the top of the page, bottom right. I also needed to mail the card, did I mention I was in the zone, so using some more patterned paper and my envelope maker I folded up the appropriate sized envelope for the card. I also used Waffle Flower’s Bone and Bow die set to make the address label for mailing. You can see this in the top photo, bottom left. I would recommend that if you would like to do this too you go to your local post office in person to make sure you have the appropriate size and postage. I have been burned a couple of times with cards that were too large or weighed just a tad too much for a regular stamp.
