Year of the Dog

I’m ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year with my card today. 2018 is the Year of the Dog, so I got out the cute dog from the Mama Elephant Lunar Animals set, ready for some colouring.

I seem to be reaching for my zig clean colour real brush pens more lately, as I’m enjoying watercolouring. I stamped the Dog with MFT Extreme Black ink, which is fine for watercolouring. I can also recommend their black hybrid ink for using with your zig pens too.

I chose just three colours of markers – beige 72, dark brown 62, and light pink 26. I added a little of the beige colour first, blending out with water. I then dried the image with a heat tool and repeated this step 3 or 4 times to get a nice buildup and blend of colour. I then added a thin line of the dark brown around the edge, blending out with water again. Finally, I added some light pink to the cheeks and blended out with water to soften.

Once the image was dry, I added some black gel pen to the eyes, and some white gel pens dots to the cheeks.

For the background, I die cut a rounded rectangle from red cardstock. I used the MFT chevron stencil with versamark ink, then embossed the chevrons with pearl embossing powder. I love the texture and shine this gives to the background. I added this to a white card base.

I stamped, in versamark ink, three of the lanterns from the Avery Elle Bunting stamp set. I embossed these with gold embossing powder. I used coordinating dies to die cut the strings and bows from gold metallic card.

The year is die cut from gold metallic cardstock, using the C&9th Double Cut Numbers.

I added everything to the card, using either foam tape or liquid glue. To help ground the dog on the card, I added a grey oval shadow beneath him.

I hope you like my Chinese New Year card. Mama Elephant also have some other lovely sets which are perfect for new year celebrations.