Fleas on Earth

I haven't entered a challenge at Catch the Bug Challenge Blog for a long time now. We have sent a Petsmart gift card to Northeast Animal Shelter every year for Christmas, and I always try to come up with a unique card to put it in. I saw the current sketch for the Stella Says Sketch challenge, and a light bulb went on! I decided to group 3 animal digi stamps from Bugaboo Stamps ("Christmas Mouse - Ornaments," "Meowy Christmas Cats," & "Rottweiler Puppy - Pile of Bones") on the focal panel to create a cute holiday card.

I opened up all three images in Photoshop, & created a blank "canvas" the size of my focal panel. I sized & placed my images onto the canvas, overlapping them to create a cohesive grouping. Because the puppy isn't really a holiday image per se, I decided to put a Santa hat on him. Not having a hat image, I downloaded one off the Internet, and used the pencil tool in Photoshop to trace around the hat. That gave me just the outline image, rather than the full-color graphic that I had downloaded. I positioned the hat on the puppy's head, and digitally erased the portion of his head that would be under the hat. Finally, I printed the image on a piece of Canson XL Mixed Media paper.

I used my Inktense pencils & a damp paintbrush to color the animals and their accessories. I also added a bit of shading to the bones, and some grey underneath the animals to ground them.

For the greeting, I pulled inspiration from a Hampton Art stamp set I have. It has a stamp that says "Fleas on Earth," but it is on two lines & I wanted a one-line greeting. There was no way to cut the stamp to have all the words on one line, & I decided trying to mask it and get the words to line up would be too difficult. So I got out my Lawn Fawn "Claire's ABC's" set, and used the letters to spell out the greeting. I stamped that onto a strip of green cardstock in Versamark ink, and heat embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder.

To assemble my card, I cut three different patterns from "Christmas Basics" & "A Very Merry Christmas" 6x6" pads, both from The Paper Studio. I especially like the cardinal pattern, since it helps tie in the animal theme of my card. I adhered them to an A2 size panel of blue cardstock. I punched a border strip from the same green cardstock I'd used for the greeting, using Fiskars' "Scallop Sentiment" punch. I glued that to the back of the focal panel, so just a bit peeks out from the bottom, and then adhered my focal panel in place. I adhered my greeting strip, and finally mounted the card front to a white card base.

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Christmas Critters" challenge
Through the Craft Room Door: "Anything Goes"
Doodle Pantry Ants in My Pantry Digital Challenge: "Anything Goes"