Yappy Birthday!

My sister-in-law's birthday is coming up soon. She & my brother have 2 dogs, so he always wants me to make a card for her from them. I used Bugaboo's "Birthday Pup 1" & "Birthday Pup 3" digital images (both apparently discontinued) for this card, inspired by the current Stella Says Sketch challenge at Catch the Bug's challenge blog.

I created a landscape A2 size digital canvas in Photoshop. After setting the margins to determine how large my focal panel would be, I drew a rectangle within those margins. Since I knew I wanted the end of the noisemaker to hang off the edge of the panel, I extended that side of the rectangle by 1/2". I opened the 2 images, & dragged them to my blank canvas. I positioned & sized them, & then printed the composite image onto a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper. I painted the scene, let it dry, & then cut off the right side, cutting around the noisemaker with my scissors. I finished by "painting" the raw edges of just the noisemaker end with a black felt tip marker, just to cover the white core of the paper so it blended in with the printed lines. I also went over the eyes of the pups with a black glaze pen, adding in catch lights with a white gel pen.

For the greeting, I created 2 canvases in Photoshop the same size as the focal panel. After setting 1/8" margins on each, I typed the "Yappy" on the top left of one, & "Birthday!" on the bottom right of the other. I used a patterned paper from the Echo Park "Happy Birthday" 6x6" pad, cut 2 pieces to size, & printed the greeting on those.

I chose a pink cardstock panel for my background. I added the stars using the "Stars" stencil from Tim Holtz. Because the stencil is narrower than a landscape A2 card, I had to do one side, with the right side of the panel masked off, and then shift the stencil over, line up the stars, & stencil the rest. I used Picked Raspberry Distress ink for the stars, to get a more subtle tone-on-tone look. Finally, I adhered that to my white card base, & adhered the greeting and image panels in place.

I'm also entering this card in Catch the Bug's September "Anything Goes" challenge.