Dog Days of Summer

Good Morning & happy start of the last week of June. Oh my, _where_ has this year gone? Anyhoo, the June Challenge over at DeeDee's Digi's is nearly at the end, but you still have some time to snag a delightful digi from the store and play along.

The featured set for June Challenge at DeeDee's is Life's a Beach,  and is totally adorable. . You can purchase this month's featured set for just $1.25, or you can get it for FREE with any $10 purchase of Deedee's Digis products from the shop. (NOTE: To receive this set for free with your qualifying order, you must enter this code, minus quotes, in the comment area of the checkout form: "DDOM-10.") Create and share any wholesome project made with this set by the challenge deadline, and Deedee will email you next month's featured set for free. Keep playing, and keep collecting freebies -- it's as easy as that!

I chose the delightfully fun set of Dog Days of Summer. There's two really adorable dog/puppy designs in the set, precolored if you wish or layered art if you choose to select your own colors and media. Some wonderful design papers and appropriate sentiments are in the set too. Here's what I did with my precolored image:

- printed several images on GP paper (which worked great in my new Canon printer purchased last July but just now set up properly). Got so frustrated trying to work with an Epson Stylus, which is cranky with certain card stock. Used an S/B rectangle to cut out the base image, and fussy cut elements from 2nd image. The sun is a separate image, also fussy cut. Did a bit of shading with copics, spica pens on the fussy cut bits.

- Printed out the digi design papers (a new thing for me.Used some Bright White printer paper purchased at Walmart, and it worked much nicer than using the plain bulk purchased printer paper). Nice colors resulted - but different printer could have made a difference too. Anyway, I was happy with the resulting papers. Cut the sun image paper to fit the card base, embossed with the C/B dots EF.

- Printed the wildly colored chevron design and then die cut with a MB Ribbon Candy Border. This worked great to hide a spot in the background paper where the EF didn't emboss all the way because of the placement of the paper in the folder. I really liked this bright chevron design and the lovely thing is, I can reprint as much of this paper as I wish and not have to store it!!!

- IO Die 156-H for the birdhouse using a snippet of kraft (found it quickly in my color coded plastic bins! Normally I would have spent an hour hunting for that little bit). Did some coloring with copics and a highlighter. (the die was a NBUS as it was purchased many, many months ago after attending a class taught by Mitra of Impression Obsessions.)

- IO Die154-A (tiny birds - also a NBUS - purchased at the same time). These were cut from tiny white snippets and colored with copics.

- Sun had been fussy cut, and was glazed with a clear WoStella and dried before layering with foam tape.

- Dog & puppy were popped up with foam tape, as was the bird house and flying bird. Red bird was glued flat with Easy Flow glue as was the chevron ribbon. After placing the dog in the pool, used some clear WoStella over the water to give a glisten, and a Sakura Silver Star pen over the water coming out of the puppy's hose. Used clear Spica on the hose, White gel pen to add some highlights.

- Sentiment from the same set printed on a snippet of the digi paper while I had the design in my Word program. This just involved placing the sentiment down at the bottom of the document - still within the margin boundary, before printing. Trimmed it out, added to another snippet of white cardstock for stability, and hand cut it. Edged with just a bit of blue Distress Ink that was on a sponge in the drawer (guess that might be a snippet too? Hey, it was leftover ink!). Some gold pearls at the bottom and this puppy was done. A fast card, other than the fussy cutting, which I do slowly.

Do check out the June Challenge over at DeeDee's.  And see what some of the awesome DT members have created for your enjoyment.

Since I have a couple of NBUS items on this card I'm going to link it to:
Darnell's NBUS Challenge #1 (which ends June 27, so you still have time to enter!)

Ta Ta for now. Our daughter is in the air on her way up to Upstate South Carolina for a few days. I'll have a scheduled post that will go up later, but will be MIA again for a few days. Ya'll enjoy whatever it is that you have planned for this week, and see ya later. Thanks for stopping to visit, please do check out the challenges, and I hope you like today's card. I did, and had fun making it too! These precolored images are great because I don't have to agonize over what colors to chose. Hugs & Blessings.