Just bepaws.

Today's entry is my take on a sketch challenge that ended weeks ago.

Here's the sketch:

Sketch challenges should be the easiest, since all the shapes are already chosen for you. But I always seem to have problems with them, hence the delay.

The papers are all from My Favorite Things, as is the little dog and his sentiment. The dog was water colored with Zig Clean Color real brush markers.

No prob-llama!

Today's birthday card features this super cute llama from My Favorite Things' Llama Love set. I've had it for months, even had the llama water colored, but not cut out.

I water colored the llama with a combination of Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers and Mission Gold watercolors. My big advice is don't use the cheap children's watercolor paper from W*lm*rt. The color soaked into that paper so fast and spread out so quickly that it was hard to get this little image contained. I had to work a lot drier than I wanted. The only reason I used it was because I thought it would cut easier on the Brother Scan and Cut. I never even got that far since these were the only images on the whole sheet that didn't bleed badly. So, back to fussy cutting, again.

The background "glow" was created with sponge daubers and no-name ink from the dollar bin at Michaels.

The rectangles were cut with a Gina Marie Designs set with an interesting detail that totally can't be seen in the photograph, but is southwestern feeling in real life. It can almost be seen in this photo:

So my next project is to work with this die set to emboss that detail more deeply into the cut pieces. The dies put that detail on both sides of the cut line, but oh-so-faintly.

To complicate matters, I may have messed up my Big Shot last week. I was experimenting with an old Spellbinders frame that never cut well, and shims. I MAY have overdone it. Yikes.

Hey, fishy fish!

So, for my next white on white adventure I used these rainbow trout dies from Gina Marie Designs. I die cut a bunch of them and glued them all down. The center fish is colored with Copic markers and covered in sparkly Wink of Stella.

The sentiment is from an old Alleyway Stamps set called "Gill Friend". I mounted this panel onto some brown card stock, then put that on a top-fold Kraft card base.

As I'm gazing at it, I'm thinking it could have been a pretty good masculine card except for that sentiment. Oh well.

White wine, anyone?

Yes, a little white on white action today, with a black sentiment. The dies and sentiments are from My Favorite Things' Wine Service and Uncorked. The sentiment strip above is on vellum, but even in real life you can't see the wine glasses behind it. Oh well.

I stamped right on the card base for this sentiment and it's crooked, of course. I'm not going to change it, however.

Next time I try this technique, I'll spotlight one of the repeated elements.

I have a trout die I've never used.

Oh happy day! (Pigs round 4)

Ok, not my favorite coloring, but I'm putting it out there anyway. I colored the pigs (My Favorite Things' Sow Much Cuteness) with Prismacolor pencils on kraft card stock. I may stick to flowers for this in the future.

I stamped an inside panel, since I used a deep brown card base, and for good measure I put a little butterfly from the same set on the inside, too. I went a little crazy and put a pig on the envelope as well. 

I had a watercolor panel in shades of lilac, and I used a crazy rays stencil that I've had for a very long time to back the pigs.