Are Moo Up for a Challenge?

Today is Day 8 of the 12 Days of Christmas event at Paper Craft Planet. I am so excited that today is my day to host the contest. All you have to do to participate is make a card or project that incorporates today's theme. Since today is day 8, the theme is "8 maids a milking," or girl and/or animal, to put it in simpler, more stamper-friendly terms.

If you participate in the challenge, load your creation into the photos area at Paper Craft Planet using the keyword/tag “12day8” (all lowercase). You’ll be entered to win a fabulous prize from today’s sponsor, Flourishes. You have until midnight EST to enter. I'll select a random winner from all of the entries submitted.

Please, please, please don’t freak out if you upload your photo and it doesn’t instantly appear in the contest album. I have to put the photos there manually. Since I’m a working girl, I can’t access the Paper Craft Planet site during the day to do this. As soon as I get home from work, I’ll check in and move the entries over to the album. I'll continue to check back throughout the evening. Your card will get there before the deadline—I promise!

Here’s my card for the challenge—and the background story behind it. My sister and I have a long-running joke between us where we send each other cow-themed cards for birthdays and other occasions. It all started when we both were in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has continued long since we’ve both graduated. So, as soon as I saw the theme for today’s challenge, I knew I wanted to be the host!

I got this cow stamp from Starving Artistamps with this cow tradition in mind. I created a simple scene using the barn image from the DoodleFactory Country set. The barn is colored with Copic markers and the sky and grass are added in by sponging on blue and green inks (in the appropriate spots, of course). I stamped the cow image on a separate piece of paper, colored it, then attached it to the scene with dimensionals.

I had a hard time deciding about the positioning of the sentiment. I ended up stamping “thank moo” on a scrap of white cardstock, then punching it out with my word window punch. I created my own slightly larger word window shaped mat by using a scrap of red cardstock that was slightly longer and wider than the word window piece and my corner rounder.

I used the striped background stamp to add a pattern to the cardfront (matching the barn), then wrapped a piece of brown ribbon around the cardfront. The scene panel is attached over that, using dimensionals.

Materials Used:
DoodleFactory Country images and sentiment, striped background (Starving Artistamps); white cardstock (Xerox); Tuxedo Black ink (Memento); markers (Copic Ciao); Cool Caribbean, Old Olive, Certainly Celery, and Real Red Classic inks, Real Red and Baja Breeze cardstock, word window punch, silver brad, corner rounder, sponge, dimensionals (Stampin’ Up!); brown grosgrain ribbon (Morex); cloud template (Nicole)