Doggies & Kitties Swap Card

Today, inspired by the doggies & kitties swap I joined, I did something I've not done much of before - going off on my own to create shapes.  I feel MUCH better about using stamps & dies to make shapes, but sometimes I just don't have what I want and have to make do with what I have!  

I had this dog sitting in my stash for some time - made from scraps shortly after I got my Pop Up Puppies stamps & dies from Stampendous (quite some time ago) - and I wanted to use him for the swap.  At first I had NO IDEA what to do with him, but I remembered that I had some papers from a dog scrapbook kit I had gotten years ago, and decided to look through them to see if something from there would work.  The blue patterned paper was the only one in that set that I thought MIGHT look okay with the dog - but I still didn't know what to do with it.  Looking through the rest of the papers, I suddenly realized what a simple shape the doghouses on another paper really were - and that inspired me to try a shaped doghouse card.

I'm not great at creating curves - like what I needed for the doghouse door - but remembered a Gemini Window Arches die set that had a decent arch curve.  It was wider than I wanted, but with care I was able to use the die cut & then trim down the sides until it was the size you see here.  

Next was the sentiment - I looked through my stamps & thought a set from Creative Craft Products called Ultimate Sentiments - Fur Babies. that had a stamp I liked for the outside (and one for the inside too!).  I wanted it to look like a speech balloon, and didn't have a die like that either - so once again, cut my own.  Then I had to cut my own bones because the ones on the paper were too small, and my one die cut was too big.  Whew!  A lot of work that I'm not very comfortable with, but I was fairly happy with how things looked.  I decided to cut another bone to add FIDO's name to the dog house and decided the card front was complete - after I added Fido, of course!  I put his head on a wobble spring.

Inside:

Inside I went simple - a couple pieces of the blue patterned paper & the sentiment stamp I had picked for the inside, and I was done.