Christmas Has Gone to the Dogs

Settle in, dear readers, this is a slightly long story, but it is a story of miracles and things happening at just the right time.  As some of you may recall, my next door neighbor has an adorable dog named Lolly.  Well, Lolly now has a boyfriend, Bear.  Bear literally showed up next door, matted, hungry, & thirsty.  My neighbor was going out, so I took Bear into my fenced-in backyard.  I looked him up, found a rabies tag, and tried to find his owner.  The local animal shelters attempted to make contact with the information they had but, no one contacted me or the shelters.  It began to get dark and I couldn't have Bear come to my house, not knowing if he was ill and could possibly infect, or attack, the Fabulous Feline Four, so I called my good friend, Tom, to come and take Bear until his owner could be found.  Fast forward a week and no one was looking for Bear.  The Man and I even drove around the neighborhood where Bear used to live to see if there were lost dog signs.  Tom and Bear fell head over heels for each other and have been inseparable.  Tom was going through a very lonely time and Bear couldn't have showed up at a better time.  It's been about nine months and Bear is healthy, happy, and has a fabulous owner.  Bear and Lola are medium, mixed-breed dogs, but they appear to be mixes of the same breeds.  They are almost exactly the same size and they LOVE to play when Bear comes over.  They run around the yard like little race cars, yipping, following each other and sharing treats.  Both dogs have been introduced to the Fabulous Feline Four with only small squabbles, mostly due to Sylvester's temper. To celebrate how happy everyone is, for Christmas this year I made Helen, Lolly's mom, and Tom, Bear's dad the exact same cards with just a few differences.

What I Used to Make my Cards:
Blue Card Base
White Card
Vanilla Card
Gold Card
Tim Holtz Mini Cats & Dogs Stamps, CMS272
Tim Holtz Framelits Mini Cats & Dogs Dies, #661594
Newton's Nook Newton's Curious Christmas
Spellbinders Petite Labels One, #S3-205
Tim Holtz Scribbly Christmas Stamps, CMS249
Wendy Vecchi Ink in Potting Soil & Fern Green
Ranger Archival Ink in Jet Black
Derwent Inktense Pencils
Word Bubbles made with Silhouette Cameo
Tim Holtz Boneyard, TH93596
Ranger Glossy Accents
Various Gel Pens
Gold Star Sequins
Tissue Paper {Dollar Tree}
Blue Ribbon
Dimensional Dots

Bear has a silver skull charm hanging from his collar; Lolly has a festive red acrylic bow.

I had already colored and die cut the two dogs; Bear is a darker grey, with one white leg, whereas Lolly is all grey and white.  Each of their noses got a dot of Glossy Accents and they were set aside.  The cats were also pre-colored and I chose the two I did due to the similarity to my cats.

Bear's Card

I designed and cut out the word bubbles using my Silhouette Cameo and stamped the sentiments in the bubbles.    I then used the Labels die to cut out the "Dear Santa, define good" sentiment and the gold paper. I glued them together and set them aside.

To begin my scene, I stamped the tree, which I inked with the Wendy Vecchi inks, slightly off the edge of the card.  I wanted to ensure I had enough room, plus I wanted the dogs to be the focal point. I colored in the baubles with various gel pens and attached a gold sequin star to each tree.  I "wrapped" each bone with tissue paper and ripped the sides to make it seem like the dog had done it.  I used dimensional dots to pop out the dogs, adding little pieces of the tissue paper to each dog; Bear has it in his mouth while Lolly got some on her head during her ravaging of the bone.  I made sure there was enough space

Lolly's Card

between the dog and the tree so I had room to add some more tissue paper scraps.  

I attached the gold and white card sentiments above each dog's head, while using the word bubble sentiment off to the right side of the card so it appeared that someone out of the scene was telling the dog not to peek.  That little warning came a bit too late.  Now, neither dog lives with any cats, but, knowing how curious cats are, I decided to add a cat to the side of the card, with a wide eyed look.  I wanted it to seem like the cats were both amazed and appalled at what the dog was doing, and quite possibly, might tattle. 

I had a great time figuring out how I was going to get my message across; and everyone loved the cards.  You can bet you will be seeing these two rascals in more of my creations. Thank you so much for reading this post; I know it was long :) Hugs!! Christi

I am entering my Christmas has Gone to the Dogs cards in the following challenges:
Fussy & Fancy - #202, Christmas Challenge
Stamplorations - December Challenge, Stamps & Gold
Stamplorations Anything Goes - Ongoing
Kraftin' Kimmie - Anything Goes or Sketch
Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers - #100, N is for Naughty Christmas
Sweet Stampin' Christmas - Anything Goes Christmas
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes
The Merry Christmas Challenge - #49, Anything Goes & Christmas

A Pendant. . .well, a Keychain for Mom

This is my very first post as a Design Team Member for Globecraft & Piccolo.  I am so excited to be a part of this dynamic team! I hope you will enjoy my tutorial and please be sure to stop by the G&P blog daily to feast your eyes on more of the fabulous creations the Design Team has in store!

Let me tell you that I am not the most coordinated person, in fact, I am really clumsy.  It has gotten worse since I had my back surgery (almost 2 years ago) as my equilibrium is still trying to adjust to my “new” back – I often walk into walls, trip over my own two feet and other fun party tricks! I have always been clumsy and only recently have started to trust myself with sharp objects and other dangerous items.  I tell you this because it will make sense later on in the post.  Read on. 

My mom is my biggest fan – how could she not be? – and I love making her gifts and cards.  Unfortunately, my mom is legally blind due to glaucoma, but she does have some sight, depending on the time of day, the weather (sunny or cloudy) and how tired her eyes are.  When I saw these acrylic blanks and the adorable chipboard shapes from Globecraft & Piccolo, I knew Mom would love a pendant. 

The Items I Used:

• Oval Acrylic Craft Charm 
• Fine Flower & Vines Flourish Accents 
• Tiny Stars, Hearts, Flowers & Swirls (I used one heart) 
• Glasstique Gloss Finishing Glaze 
• Mardi Gras Embossing Enamel (I had already embossed the tiny heart) 
• Sharpie Marker in Green
• LuminArte Radiant Rain in Rich Cobalt
• Small Paint Brush
• Mrs. Grossman's Alphabet Stickers, black with clear background
• Blue Plastic Flower Gem
• Piece of Purple Shimmer Cardstock for backing
• Keychain (which is not listed in the store yet, but will be!)

The Fine Flower & Vines Flourishes naked :)

First thing I did was figure out my layout.  I knew I wanted the pendant to say Mom, to have flowers & hearts and be vibrant enough so she could see it.  I had colored the flower with Distress Markers first, but then I was worried that they’d run and I’d be left with a bare flower once they had contact with the Glasstique, so I recolored with a green Sharpie for the stem of the flower and LuminArte Rich Cobalt for the actual flowers.  Since LuminArte is also water soluble I knew there’d be some running of the color, but I wanted to give it a try and I felt a halo effect would almost enhance the pendant.  I colored the flower & stem quite a few times, letting it dry thoroughly in between coloring.

The beginning of the layout

Now I had to dig through my immense stash of letter stickers.  I confess, letters and fonts are another crafty addiction of mine and I had quite a bit of stickers to choose from.  And of course, the last bunch I looked at had the perfect black letters on a clear backing from Mrs. Grossman.  I stuck those on the acrylic base and then fooled with the flower and the little heart (that I had previously embossed with Mardi Gras Embossing Enamel when I was using the enamel on a card I made).  Once I was happy with the placement, I glued everything down.  Let that dry overnight, just to be sure.  I also had a hell of a time getting the blue covers off the acrylic, which was nothing new, and in hindsight, I should have left the back cover on the pendant until I was done.  But nooooo, I had to take all the covers off - my mistake!

The last step was to cover the entire design with Glasstique.  I hadn’t worked with this top coat yet, but I have worked with similar products in the past.  I bit the bullet and slowly squeezed the Glasstique in the middle of the pendant and let it flow naturally over the front.  Beautiful.  I left the pendant alone for about 8 hours.  When I went to check on it, I noticed that some of the Glasstique had flowed over the sides and went under the acrylic piece, (see why I should of left the back on?) and in my terror that I would have Glasstique stuck to the back I picked the pendant up to clean off the back before it had dried completely.  Well, in doing that I also cause a ripple and a fingerprint in the front, right were the “o” in Mom was. And then I dropped it (see, this is the clumsy part) but thankfully no more damage was done and I was able to pick the cat hairs off the pendent.  OK – not to worry – I let the piece dry completely and then I figured I’d be able to fix it somehow. 

My fix was a fiasco.  I thought if I dabbed just a bit of the Glasstique where the ripple and finger print were it would magically meld itself into the already dry coating and would be fixed.  Nope.  So now, I had a blob over the ripple and fingerprint – the good news being I couldn’t see the previous mistakes, just the blob now. 

The arrow is pointing to the blob of a mistake - I didn't take a pic of my fingerprint LOL

 I wrestled with just throwing the whole thing out and trying again, but I hate to waste products (as evidenced by my overflowing stash of scraps and doo dads) so I went to plan B – after I thought of plan B.  I have quite a collection of plastic gems so I picked through the ones I felt would work with what I’d already done and humbly asked my G&P Design Teammates which “fix” looked best.  That narrowed it down to 2 possible solutions, so I chose to use a blue plastic flower gem, which I glued right onto the Glasstique with a tiny dab of E6000 glue.   And then I put the cardstock paper on the back and that also helped a bit to camouflage the blob.  Whew!  You can still see the blob in certain light, but I think it’s a save.  Mom may not have a new pendant anymore, but she has a fabulous keychain! 

The fabulous Manny holding the keychain

And the keychain - whew!

I already have my eye on what I am going to dive into next – Mom may get a pendent after all!  I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial ~ Fondly, Christi

If you’d like more information about Globecraft & Piccolo’s products, you can go to the main webpage HERE - you’ll even find some tutorial YouTube videos!