Friends Furever

When I saw the new dog themed stamp sets from My Favorite Things, I knew I'd have to add them to my collection. Since I was a little girl, I've always had a dog (or 2) in my life. I adore my current dog, Cosmo (aka Cosmo the crazy dog). He's a German shepherd/golden retriever mix with some chow and husky thrown in for good measure. Cosmo is beautiful and gets comments on his unique look wherever we go. He's also very friendly and engaging, especially for a large dog.

Unfortunately, he's constantly in some kind of trouble, which usually means a trip to the vet. Our latest visit was yesterday afternoon, where the vet told me that he's extremely smart and manipulative and also obsessive-compulsive. When I'm at work, he's been wearing a huge "cone" collar for most of the last two weeks because he won't leave some hot spots near his tail alone. When I come home, he gets a reprieve, but he has learned that he must stay within 2 feet of me or else I track him down and haul him back to where I am. As a result, I'm constantly tripping over him or getting drooled on. Right now, he has his head on my arm as I'm typing (making it difficult for me, but no inconvenience for him). In this picture, he's lying in the doorway to my stamping area, waiting for the okay from me to go somewhere else (his eyes look funky from the camera's flash). All I can say is that he's lucky he's so cute . . .

Anyway, Cosmo was kind of the inspiration for this card that I made using Jen's sketch challenge. I colored the image with Copic markers and used Cosmo's coloring for the dog image. Tomorrow morning, I'm taking a class on using Copics at my (not-so) local stamp store. I'm excited about learning the right techniques to use the markers and about getting to meet one of the other Great Swaps Girls, Amy from Pickled Paper Designs, at the class, too.

I used three different colors of Prints Series patterned paper for the cardfront, mixing flowers, stripes, and dots to match the colors in my image. I hid the seam between the patterned papers with a piece of red satin ribbon. I found three tiny buttons that were a pretty close match to the Blue Bayou paper and added those as a simple embellishment.

Materials Used:

Friends Furever stamp set (My Favorite Things); white cardstock (Georgia Pacific); Graphite Black ink (Brilliance); markers (Copic Ciao); Real Red Classic ink, Real Red, So Saffron, and Blue Bayou cardstock, Real Red, So Saffron, and Blue Bayou Prints Series designer paper, dimensionals (Stampin' Up!); red satin ribbon (Target); small buttons (Walmart)