Still catching up on posts…

I purchased this paper pad a few years ago to make Christmas cards for pet people.  The paper wasn’t available as a 6×6 so I purchased the larger 12×12 paper pad.  None of the local Michael’s stores had the paper in-stock so I ordered it online.  The pictures on the website showed a nice mix of traditional red and green, plus some blue and burgundy.  When the paper arrived it had all of the cute dog and cat images but in a more muted color palette than what I expected so I needed to re-think my cardstock selections.

The paper pad included papers which were cat only, dog only and both cats and dogs.  I tried to use some of each and although I am a dog person I started with a cat-only print.  The cat with the snowflake is too cute and I tried to ensure it was visible on several cards.  I added a couple silver brads for embellishment and used Gerda Steiner Designs Deck the Halls stamp set for the sentiment.

The next group of cards used a dog-only print.  I thought about using the same layout that I used for the “cat” cards but the dog images seemed to be spread out a bit more and worked better for a horizontal card.  A dark green cardstock was used for all of the matting and to brighten up the muted colors a cream colored shimmer paper was used for the background.  A small banner using the same green cardstock and a couple gold Nuvo drops finished the cards.

These cards used a paper with both cats and dogs.  To keep the card pet neutral, a simple gray/white polka dot was used for the thin panel on the left side of the card.  To separate the different prints a strip of charcoal gray glitter washi tape was added along the seam.  Burgundy cardstock was used for the small fish-tailed banner and to mat the sentiment panel.

The paper pad included a sheet of border strips which were perfect to use with this layout.  When trimming the strips to fit the card, I tried to cut them so that only full images, like with the Christmas trees, were included.  For the larger panels, coordinating paw print and striped paper were used.  A cream colored shimmer paper was used for the background.  To add some additional sparkle, Love from Lizi peel-offs were added to the edges of the border strips.

The next few cards used some more of the border strips paired with the rest of the dog and cat papers.  One of the border strips had a nice gold foil scalloped border.  For the other strip, a metallic silver washi tape was used to add some shine.  The sentiment panels were popped up with foam tape to add dimension.

At this point there was only one full 12×12 sheet and miscellaneous scraps left.  While the full sheet had lots of cute images, it was also extremely busy.  I decided to try it as a background.  By adding a few border strips and a diagonal striped banner, they toned down some of the busyness of the background paper.  I thought about adding a sentiment, but thought there were enough cute sayings still visible on the background paper.

I’ll be donating most of these cards and thought something besides the traditional Santa, snowmen and Christmas trees would be fun.  Maybe one of the cute dog or cat images looks like someone’s pet and would be the perfect Christmas card.