PFS August Release | Stella Puppy Cards

Hi guys!!

Where are my fellow crazy dog people at? In this month’s Picket Fence Studio release there is a super cute puppy stamp called Stella Puppy.

It looks so much like my sweet Lab boy Hercules, who we lost back in 2016 after a very short, but ferocious health issue battle. Less than six weeks after that, we lost our remaining Lab, called Molly, in a tragic accident. The cards I got from friends after we lost them meant the world to me, because losing a fur baby, never mind two, is one of the most gut wrenching things you can ever go through.

I’ve made two card, doing my thing where they are similar but slightly different. On the first card I stamped the Stella Puppy up with my MISTI and Black Hybrid ink directly onto a card base of Neenah card stock. After setting the ink with my WOW! Embossing heat tool, I got to work with Copics. I don’t have a photo of the first one, but here is the second one I did.

I wanted to add a rainbow on the background but I don’t have a rainbow stencil *insert shocked gasps and wide-eyed looks here* I know, it’s shocking. So, what to do? Well, I made my own! First I cut out a mask and added over most of the doggie, then I used a small bowl to cut out a curved shape out of card stock. This I used as a stencil/mask and ink blended Ink On 3 Atelier Inks in Bee Sting Yellow, Goddess Green, Peacock Blue, My Jam Purple and Marilyn Red with Life Changing Blender Brushes.

My brushes are a little bit over-saturated and need a spa day, and I should have used a new mask for each colour, as they blended into each other BUT it did also give me an extra teal colour between green and blue. The last bit, in the top left corner, I should have skipped because I feel like it got too dark, but oh well.

On white card stock I stamped up some sentiments from the Stella Puppy set with Black Hybrid ink. These I trimmed down as much as I could and then added over some areas where I wasn’t happy the colouring and ink blending had overlapped.

The final touch was to add some Glossy Accents to the little nose and set it aside to dry.

On my second card, for which there is a video on my YouTube channel, I tried applying what I learnt from the first card. With some success and some more issues. Card making is never straightforward in my craft room, lol!

For this, I decided to stamp up the Stella Puppy on a separate piece of Copic friendly card stock, with my Mini MISTI with the Black Hybrid Ink, colour it in and then fussy cut it out. I used slightly different colour Copics on this one and I think the depth is better, than the first one, so that was good. You can see the difference in the photo above.

Second, I used a sheet of acetate to make my “stencil”, instead of card stock. The reasoning for this is that with acetate I can just wipe off the ink, and have less contamination. Good start. Less good execution. I used a, what I thought was, permanent marker to draw the shape of the curve of the rainbow. Well, it was less permanent and more smudgy than I realised, which led to a slightly dirty looking yellow bit. I trimmed off the part with the marker on it, and carried on.

I used the same Atelier Inks on this one, in the same order, after wiping my Life Changing Blender Brushes on kitchen towels. I also used a lighter hand with the inks.

With the negative part of the stencil/mask I was able to add more green to the background, without mixing in the blue. This is better explained in the video, but I didn’t add enough green or moved the stencil/mask too far when I did the blue, which left a gap. By covering up the blue with the negative bit, I was able to add the green without contaminating the blue. Pretty smart, huh?

On this card, I stamped up the sentiments, again from Stella Puppy, directly onto the card base with Black Hybrid ink. Then I adhered the fussy cut puppy with liquid glue and added the Glossy Accent to the nose.

There is another sweet pet stamp in the release called Your Friend Dear. I’ve done the same thing with this stamp: basically the same layout, but different looks.

This was the one I started with, and I actually stopped midway because I was not very happy with the colouring of the dog. I couldn’t make it work!

In order to get me out of that funk, I stamped it up again and tried another colour combination, this time with Warm Greys. This worked better and I finished off the card with a very colourful girl, and a simple sentiment from Levels Of Friendship. And the Glossy Accent again.

With this one being a success, and also my meh-ness about the first one having died down a little, I thought I’d give it another go. I’m very glad I did because I did actually manage to turn it around!

To make sure this one was different than the first one, with all that white space, I cut a mask out and placed over the image. Over this I used the Fancy Kaleidoscope stencil and Distress Oxide inks in Wild Honey, Worn Lipstick and a hint of Abandoned Coral. They created this gorgeous glow around the image and I love how it turned out!

The final touch for this card was to stamp up the sentiment that comes with Your Friend Dear, in Black Hybrid ink and with that, it was all done. The last two cards are not in it, but there is a video for one of the rainbow puppy cards on my YouTube channel.

The August release from Picket Fence Studio is now available and if you shop any of these links, which are compensated affiliate links to various companies, I will get a small commission directly from the company it’s affiliated with. It won’t cost you anything extra at all, but the potential earnings from these links will keep my blog, YouTube and Instagram fresh and fun. Thank you so much if you choose to support me this way.

Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

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