Arf Arf

This was a fun card to make, even if I went a little overboard. The card was made for a gal on my team at work who is having surgery on her hand today. She lives in Oregon and I wanted her to know that I was thinking about her. She has 4 Basset Hounds and is a Basset Hound rescue mom.
The window and the bubble are Eat Cake Graphics. The flowers and the leaves on the tree are Purple Onion Design. The Arf is Picture Show. The curtains were made using one of the Fiskars boarder punches. The rest of the things on the card are cut from paper. The paper comes from a pack of K&Company Mat Pad that Peggy sent to me. Thank you so much Peggy.
I found the picture of the Basset on the Internet and printed him on a piece of transparency. This was a lot of putzing, even for me. I added some additional color to the paper with Copic Markers and a daub of Glossy accents to the middle of the flowers. For the inside, I am going to put "Translation - Thinking of you and hoping the surgery went well."
Hopefully this will cheer her up or give her a little smile this week. While looking at Basset Hound pictures, I found this cute little saying, "If it is not a Basset Hound, it is just a dog." Isn't that really cute? Bassets are pretty special dogs, but then I think that all dogs are pretty special. I absolutely love my dog. She is a very special part of our family. I am allergic to animals and as long as I keep a dog in my house, I can exist. What scares me is that if we don't get another dog after Scout leaves us, I won't be able to have another dog. Mike says NO MORE DOGS. We will just have to see. You know how that goes. The hubby can say whatever he wants and I will do what ever I want.
Thanks for stopping in. Hope you have a great day.

To Lady Bug or Not to Lady Bug, That is the question.

I think this card needs something else. But what? Perhaps a little ladybug somewhere? The red and black will go well with the colors.

The flower is hand drawn. The sentiment is Purple Onion Design. I used watercolors for the flower.

I like the colors. Kinda fall and yet still bright and summery. Not really a birthday theme but what the hey. I wanted to do something different. Something I didn't lift from someone else or even myself. I am mildly please with the end results. Mainly because I like the colors.

A Pondering: I love color. I am adventurous with color when it comes to using it on cards. In my life, however, I tend to stick more to the earth tones. I very seldom buy colors that are not in my Fall palette. I had my colors done years ago and they said I was an Fall. I really liked the Summer colors better, because I like Summer much better than Fall. In the house, mostly neutrals. Probably from watching to much HGTV Designed to Sell and hearing that those are the best to use if you are going to sell. I am not going to sell my house, but they do seemed to work. The only place where I broke out of the neutral colors was in the bathroom and there I went with a very bright banana yellow. I guess you could almost call it a Pee Yellow, but banana just sounds better. Didn't really think the whole color thing through when I was pondering on it.

Lifting from myself

Well it is has come to this. I am lifting ideas from myself. I wanted this card to be special. However, I was having some serious lack of imagination. The card is to go to a very special person and I wanted to do something really groovy. Deep sigh. I like the card, don't get me wrong. But I have done this design several times before. A couple of things have changed, but it is still the same basic design. I suppose the way I need to look at this is that if it is a decent design and it works nothing wrong with using it again.
The majority of the stamps are from two companies that I just love to pieces - Eat Cake Graphics and Purple Onion Designs. I don't know if you have noticed, but I tend to use stamps from these companies on most all of my work. I did alot of masking on this card and it is colored with pencils. I had to draw in the little bird and the tree. The area for the sentiment was to small to use stamps so I just printed the sentiment. I also had to pare down the little hat. The stamp is actually much bigger.
Well I have a couple of cards that I want to work on today and I am hoping that I can come up with a new design. I was pondering the other day about why I don't seem to be able to come up with new ideas. I let all of my magazine subscriptions expire except for one - Rubber Stamp Madness. (Speaking of which, in the next issue, I have a little Christmas piece in it). I use to get lots of magazines and I am wondering if not having something to look to spark ideas is part of the problem. I would see something I liked, which would give me thoughts about how to change it or use part of it or something. Since I am home alone this weekend, maybe what I will do is pull out some of the magazines that I kept and start looking thru them to see if sparks will start flying. Wish me luck.