Westie Birthday Card for Cute Card Thursday

I have had the animal face stamps from Peachy Keen for some time and only used them a couple of times, so I dug them out and cut the little dog from Animal Kingdom in white at 3 1/2" Her face is peachy keen, the little bone on her collar and the oval sentiment scallops are by

Go-Kreate. Papers are by SEI. The challenge on Cute Card Thursday is an animal card, so this is my offering.

There won't be a shortage of people to send this to, as a family we love Westies. We used to have one called Kirsty, who was a much loved family pet for 16 years. She was always a roamer, if a door was left open she would make a break for freedom. When she was just a puppy, and a bit of an inconvenience to be honest, ( you know the drill, kids want a dog, mum does all the work) she made one of her mad dashes, straight into the path of a car and broke her leg pretty badly. It needed surgery, and the next day we went to visit her at the doggie hospital. She ignored the children, but was so ecstatic to see me that she peed all over the table. Now no other living creature, before or since, has ever been so happy to see me that this happened (I can be quite certain of this), and I fell totally in love with her at that moment, and adored her until the day she died, in my arms, many years later. We still miss her and talk of her often. Boy, do they leave their little pawprints on your heart.

Live life in the deep end..................

I have combined two of my greatest crafting loves for this one, my Cricut and stamping. I cut the fishbowl out of white paper at 3" (animal kingdom), then cut the wavy edged layer also in white. I stamped the swimming cat onto this layer (great impressions), and coloured with copic markers, adding a bit of blue to the edges for a watery look. The seaweed was also from animal kingdom. I coated the whole thing in three layers of glossy accents, then wrapped a ribbon around the edge of the bowl. The papers are from DCWV nana's kids stack. The expression on the cat's face makes me smile, that's a wicked little grin he has.

There will now be a short intermission.................we fly back to the UK tomorrow, so all the cases are packed, two have been on an outing to Publix to be weighed and came in at 10lbs under the allowance, however, since then I have probably stuffed at least another 20 lbs into each of them. I even found myself saying to Mike 'you don't need to take more than one pair of trousers home with you' the poor guy is allowed just the clothes he is wearing. The craft stuff takes up the whole of one suitcase, then there are the Christmas presents, shed loads of them, oh and that darling pair of shoes I got on sale, and those cute ornaments for the tree.........I think I had better start practicing my wobbly voice again for when we check in at the airport.

Animal Kingdom Christmas Penguins

I thought I would make a Christmas card using the penguins from animal kingdom. I cut them in white at 5", then again for the layer in a spotty black and white paper. I gave the mummy penguin a gift to hold, decorated with a punched snowflake, the baby is sitting on a bed of punched pine branches that have been glittered. He is only sitting on these because there was a smudge that found it's way onto the card when I wasn't looking, so I had to cover it up somehow. I was too far down the line to start again! I am sure you all know this, but a great way of applying glitter to cuts like this is to run them backwards through your xyron machine, so that the front of the die cut is sticky, cover with glitter then run through again to make the back sticky. The animal faces were stamped using Peachy Keen stamps, the set gives faces for all the animals on this cartridge. Their expressions make me laugh, they look rather disdainful and a bit bored.

Peachy Keen Face Stamps

I bought a couple of sets of the Peachy Keen face stamps, one for the animals from Animal Kingdom, and one for New Arrival. There was a bit of a learning curve with them as you can't cut the images with the little marks for facial features, so if the face is in blackout, the whole animal is blacked out. To overcome this, I cut two, one regular, one blackout. I then placed the regular cut with the detail, over the blackout and punched tiny holes with a paper piecer along the detail marks (leaving the face blank). It was then easy to doodle along the detail marks as usual. The face stamps are very cute. Here are some cards I made with them, all the animals were cut at 4"

My favourite of course is the lamb.

You Lucky Duck

This is another of those Inkadinkadoo dollar stamps, and as soon as I saw the sentiment I thought of the little duck from Animal Kingdom. I cut at 3" and decided she would look cute all dressed up in Autumn colours! I used the DCWV Fall stack for all the papers, added doodling, and thought of giving her a ribbon bow, but left her bowless in the end.

So what's been happening here in the past couple of days? Well, I worked late into the night to finish a magazine commission, it's all ready to mail now, and later today I go to the airport to pick up Mike who is flying in from the UK. So a happy day, made happier by the fact that my High 5 card won Cardvaarks 'work' challenge, so I have a gift voucher to spend. Yipee!

Just Dropping You A Line - Cricut Card

I have bought some of these really funny (and cheap) Inkadinkadoo stamps, and used this one with the fish from Animal Kingdom cut at 2". I added some dew drops for bubbles, and some prima flowers.

The scallop border was done with the new Fiskars 'threading water' punch.

Hippity Hoppity Easter Card

This is made with the Animal Kingdom cartridge, one of my favourites. If anyone is thinking about this one - get it, it's so versatile. The saying was cut using the sound feature at 2", and the bunnies were cut using the border feature at 3". I stuck primas on for their tails, doodling (of course, it's my new passion!).

Max Bedtime Story Layout

I have these really sweet photos of my son Edward and his wife Lidia reading a bedtime story to Max. He seems very interested in Millie Moo, so I cut the cow out of Animal Kingdom at 4", and the sound MOO at 3". I computer generated the words around the main picture. I wanted this layout to be bright and zingy, and I think it's achieved that, they will be pleased with it - I hope!