Horses and Dogs, Part 1

If you only want to see today's cards, scroll down quickly to the last part of this post.

As much as I love card-making, a more important part of my life revolves around animals, in particular dogs and horses.  My dear English Cocker Spaniel, Will, is my constant companion at home, and a variety of horses fill two or three days of each week.  There are the ones I volunteer with at the therapeutic riding program like Teddy, an amazing Norwegian Fjord who is gentle, patient, caring, and always well-behaved with a special needs rider, but can be a real rascal with the kids in the regular lesson program.

Me with Teddy

And here's Sprite, the star of our therapeutic horses, who never moves a muscle when it takes 10 minutes to get a rider with cerebral palsy on his back, or a rider with MS suddenly has a very jerky muscle spasm, or even when the therapeutic riding instructor's dog sits on his back.

Sprite with Sadie

And then there is the horse I lease two days a week.  She's a sweet, gentle, 22 year old Arab mare - perfect for someone like me who just wants to enjoy the pleasures of riding without the challenges of a demanding horse.  Her name is Betta and I feel so lucky to have come across her.

Betta

In honour of these equine friends, I'm posting a couple of cards I just made featuring horses.  Nothing too exciting in the way of techniques, but I still love doing the plain old simple cardmaking that I started out with years ago.

This one was made for the Splitcoaststampers Christmas Card challenge, with an August theme of "furry friends".  I have a sale of my Christmas cards every November to raise money for the therapeutic horse riding program, so I always make some cards with horses on them for the sale.

 

And this one was made for the SCS Dare to Get Dirty Challenge posted by SweetMissDaisy.  Dare to Get Dirty challenges are only for SCS Fan Club Members so you need to join the Fan Club to take part - joining is a great way to help keep SCS going.  Like me, my sister took up riding again in her retirement.  She's far more ambitious than me and  is planning on entering some small horse shows in the fall.  So I made this card to send to her in a few weeks.

Supplies for the Christmas one:

Stamps: Serendipity "Clyde", A Muse sentiment
Paper: white and shimmery copper cs, red glitter cs
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, ColorBox Copper
Accessories: watercolour pencils, clear embossing powder, red gems, deckle edge and rectangle dies, label die (all dies by Spellbinders)

Supplies for the Good Luck one:

Stamps: Impression Obsession horses, SU sentiment

Paper: Gina K ivory cs, brown cs

Ink: Memento Rich Cocoa

Accessories: coloured pencils, dimensionals