Puppies and Petunias

If all you're interested in is cards, skip down through this post to see today's cards.  If you like puppies, read on.  Many of you know that Shea, the brown dog in my photo on my sidebar, died of cancer last spring.  Her brother, Will (the black dog), is 12 now so I'm thinking if I want to be sure I don't end up dog-less (that would be a dire state of affairs for me!) when he passes away, I'd better get a puppy soon.

Their breeder has become a good friend of mine and invited me over to watch her lovely English Cocker Spaniel, Snow, give birth this weekend.  It was quite a thrill watching the miracle of birth.  We were up all night as she started panting and pacing and went into the whelping box late in the evening, and then labour started at 3:00 a.m. when her water broke.  The first pup was born at 4:35 a.m. so we were up most of the night.   She had 3 girls, 1 boy.  They were all born by 6:00 a.m. so we got a couple of hours of sleep after that.  Here's a couple of photos:

One day old puppies aren't the cutest things in the world but give it a couple of weeks, and they will be adorable.

It amazes me how animals have such strong instincts to know exactly what to do.  Even though she'd never had puppies before, when each puppy came out, Snow immediately started tearing off the birth sac and licking the pup vigorously to get it breathing and then chewed through the umbilical cord.

In 9 or 10 weeks, one of the sweet girl pups will be coming home with me.  So expect to see quite a few puppy pictures!

Now on to the reason you visit my blog - a couple of cards.

I've been following Karen Dunbrook's lovely work where she stamps images using brushos and water instead of ink.  I made two variations of the same image, one just with the outline of the image, the other with the outline coloured in.

For the basic technique of stamping with the brushos, see Karen's tutorial on SCS.  That's all I did for the first card before adding the sentiment, die cutting with a stitched square and popping it up on foam tape.

The second one required more work and is going to be taken over to April's CAS Mix-Up challenge of Stamping + Stenciling + one or more other elements of your choice.

My other elements are brushos, watercolour paints, texture paste, splatter, and gemstones.

I painted the stamp with various purple, violet, and green brushos that I'd watered down a bit on my craft sheet. Then stamped and let it dry a bit. Then using my waterbrush, I picked up more of the colour and filled in the flowers and leaves. When that was dry, I did a blue wash around it with watercolour paints. I stamped my sentiment in grey. I laid a stencil over the top, went through just areas on the corners and sides with texture paste, and let that dry. Last touch was a light splatter using the sentiment ink watered down a bit. The panel is popped up on fun foam and a couple of purple gemstones added to the flowers.


Thanks for dropping by (even if you didn't read all the early part about puppies!).

Supplies:

First card:

Stamps: Rubbernecker Petunias, unknown sentiment
Paper: PTI vintage cream cs, watercolour paper
Paper Size: 4.75" square
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Accessories: purple, violet, and green brushos, Lil Inker stitched square, foam tape

Second card:

Stamps: Rubbernecker Petunias, Impression Obsession sentiment

Paper: PTI vintage cream cs, watercolour paper

Paper Size: 5"x4.25"

Ink: Ranger Hickory Smoke

Accessories: green, violet, and purple brushos; purple gemstones, TCW stencil, texture paste, blue watercolour paint, fun foam