doghouse

Santa Stop Here

| ullycatdesigns

Fur babies can enjoy the winter holidays as much as their human parents. This little pup doesn’t want Santa to forget her. She’s got her Santa hat and lights on her house as well as a sign asking Santa to stop.

The card front uses the dog from the Dog House Tiny House Add-Ons cut three times to make her stand out from the busy background paper. Dog bones from this set were also added to hint at what is to come on the inside.

To create the dog house, cut out and assemble a red Tiny House. (See assembly video.) I used the same red lightweight cardstock for the side panels from the add-ons. I choose not to ink the dies to print the siding lines, but rather to emboss them and then, using a white ink cube, to add a powdery dusting of snow.

For the colorful lights, use the lights from the Holiday House die set. (I used shimmer paper and colored them with fine-tipped markers.) The wreath is also from the Holiday House. Pup is added to the front of the dog house with a thick foam dot.

The snowy look on the roof was created by painting a thick coating of glitter gloss and using Effect Snow around the edges. To hold up the “Santa Stop Here” sign, a grassy strip from the Mushroom Tiny House Add-Ons set was cut, Effect Snowed, and glued to the card base and dog house. The sign is made from three of the school signs from the Church and School Tiny House Add-Ons set.

White octagons from the Bam Box Pop-Up die set are placed in opposing corners like snowballs for personal messages. Snowflake borders cut from shimmer paper using the Long Nature Edges 2 set.

Card backs are just as important as fronts. This one is decorated with left over strips.

The back flap of the envelope hints at what’s to come with the Santa capped pup.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Echo Park Paper Co. – 12 x 12 Double-Sided Cardstock – A Perfect Christmas by Lori Whitlock – Christmas Collage – APC135008
  • Red Light-Weight Cardstock – 8.5 x 11
  • Colored Cardstock Scraps
  • White A7 Envelope

Pens & Inks

  • Blue, Red, Yellow and Blue Fine-Tipped Markers
  • Gelly Roll 08 Pen – White
  • Pigma Micron 05 – Archival Ink .045mm – Dark Brown
  • American Crafts – Metallic Markers – Silver

Miscellaneous

Staying Out of The Doghouse

| ullycatdesigns

Pets are great companions and always eager to greet us when we come home. This card is for a pet to their owner who is recuperating from an illness.

For this card, I’ve used two die sets from the August 2022 release by Karen Burniston – Fireplace Pop-Up and Word Set 15 – Just Because. The fireplace is the lower half of the doghouse with half a crosshatch square for the roof.  (I highly recommend watching the assembly video for the fireplace before starting the card.)

The fireplace mechanism is also used to make the doghouse pop-up. You need to adhere it first before assembling the doghouse. You will need a 5×7 inch card base.

To make the doghouse, I cut the medium crosshatched square diagonally to have a triangle. You should glue the triangle onto the fireplace base so that the height of the house is 4.5 inches high. (I had to trim off the tip of the house to fit into the card when assembled onto the mechanism.)

I cut strips of the blue cardstock to become siding on the house. Start gluing strips on at the bottom and overlap them to cover the house, trimming the siding on the triangle to fit the slatted roof eaves.

Use the cut out from the fireplace to make a sign for the doghouse. Using a brown ink, rubbing ink on a sponge from the bottom to top to weather the house.

To create the eaves, use the medium crosshatch square with the next size down square to cut a square frame. Then snip at opposite corners to from two crosshatch eves that cane be glued together and then glued over the eaves and siding on the house.

Glue the house to the mechanism matching up the opening.  Decorate with grass, clouds, sun from various nature decorative die sets by Karen Burniston. The puppy and dog dish with bone are from her Cat and Dog set. (See assembly video for the dog.) They are made to pop-up away from the house using the small pop-up mechanism from the fireplace set. (You could also angle them using KB’s Mini Pops Pop-Up die set.)

The sentiments are from two die sets – Word Set 15 – Just Because and Word Set 10 – Thinking of You.

For the front of the card, I used a rectangle of plaid paper cut a half-inch smaller than the card dimension and used a fine tipped black marker and metal ruler to draw two lines around the paper to frame it. White stich marks were added to the plaid paper with a white gel pen.

The sentiment is another of Karen Burniston’s die sets called Home Sweet Home. The grass and dog were left over from the inside of the card and the hearts are from the “Os” in the front sentiment.

The envelope flap is stamped with a Lawn Fawn stamp with dogs and other critters to hint at what’s to come inside.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Colored cardstock and patterned paper scraps
  • American Crafts – 5 x7 Kraft card & A7 envelope

Pens, Crayons, Inks & Coatings

  • Sharpie – Permanent Marker – Ultra Fine Point – Black
  • Sakura – Gelly Roll Pen– 08 -White
  • Memento – Fade-Resistant Dye Ink – Tuxedo Black
  • Ranger – Tim Holtz -Distress Ink – Vintage Photo

Stamps

  • Lawn Fawn – Simply Celebrate Critters

Miscellaneous