MFT Lucky Dog & You Make My Tail Wag | Birthday & Sympathy Cards
When I saw My Favorite Things' dog stamp sets "Lucky Dog" and "You Make My Tail Wag," I knew they would make a great addition to my stamp collection because I absolutely adore dogs, have dog-lover friends, and work with dogs every day at my job. "Lucky Dog" was first on my list because it has a chihuahua, and I have a pet chihuahua named Rocko. I mainly got "You Make My Tail Wag" because it had some great additional accessories and sentiments that could be used in combination with "Lucky Dog." I also had to get the MFT Dog House die to complete the collection :)
Within 1 week, I had a lot of reasons to create some cards. One was that some good friends of mine had lost their chihuahua very suddenly and unexpectedly. While I had this stamp set out to make this card, I stamped out a few more dogs, and decided to make a birthday card for a friend who also has a dog that he adores.
For the sympathy card, I wanted to go with a solemn type theme. For my background, I decided to create a gloomy sky by blending blue and purple distress inks. I die-cut some clouds from vellum. I also created some clear enamel dots using Nuvo drops to represent rain. For the rest of the background, I die-cut the MFT dog house, some grass and a fence from Lawn Fawn dies. I also wanted to make this an interactive card, so I used the MFT Slider Channel die.
My friends' chihuahua, Kiwi, had a unique coloring that wasn't simple at all to duplicate with my zig markers. She was a mixture of white, black, and brown, and any time the colors ran into each other (being water-based markers), they mixed together. I tried doing one color at a time, letting them dry, then doing another color, but if the new color touched the old, it reactivated the old color, mixing them together regardless. I finally decided on a coloring that would work; it would be similar to Kiwi's coloring, but the patterns would not be identical.
I did have a bunch of difficulties with this card, and after I made it, I realized some things I could have done differently to make it work better, but I decided to send the card after all as it worked and I had worked hard on it. I'm sure they'll love it, and will still let them know that they are in my and my husband's thoughts. R.I.P. Kiwi.
As for the birthday card, the particular dog stamp that was the most similar to a pitbull had a head and a back for the dog's body. This was made to work perfectly with an opening in a card, such as a window. I decided to go with this and create a comical card with the dog looking out the "window" and when you open the card, you find that he had set up his bed and turned over it food bowl on top of it to give him leverage to look out the window. Whenever I can create some type of interactive card, I try to do so.
This dog was pretty easy to color similarly to my friend's dog as it was only white and brown. I looked up some pictures on FB to get some of the details exact, but then created some of my own for the parts of the dog not shown in the pictures I found. Being a boy, I colored his collar a light blue.
I recently rearranged my craft room so that my mixed media tools, which I use more than embellishments, are right at my desk rather than across the room. Having recently done this, I got the idea to create a watercolor background to match the dog I had colored with a light blue collar. After creating my background, I cute down the paper, then die cut a "window" from it. I added a light blue frame to the front and back of the window, then added a black frame and black for the inside of the card which would show behind the dog through the window.
I also stamped, colored, and die cut the doggie bed and dog bowl, and used some golden sequins to represent food in the dog bowl. After putting all the pieces together on the card, I felt it came out pretty good. I hope he likes it :)
