Puppy Love

The "Dog Days" of Summer brings a lot of things to my mind-- hot afternoons, kids running through the lawn sprinklers, popsicles, time to start thinking about "back to school" (Yeah! I am excited about that!). But when I first thought about what I wanted to do for this theme, I knew immediately I wanted to make "Oliver the Dog." Now, if you have never met Oliver, he is one of Kimm's darling tear critters and boy is he a cutie, don't you think?


Of course, my first thought was to actually put Oliver on a layout called "The Dog Days of Summer" since I do seem to be the layout girl around here. However, I ran into this darling idea for a baby shower gift and decided it was just perfect for my project (besides the fact that I am giving a double baby shower for two of my sister-in-laws on Labor Day weekend and I was looking around for something cute to give them!) And so I found a soft stuffed dog, matching flannel to make a receiving blanket, made a tear critter to match and put it all together in this clear gallon paint bucket.


Instead of using the brown and white colors shown on the front of Oliver's pattern, I made my tear puppy out of white and black mulberry paper. Every time I make a tear critter, I just love them more and more. With Kimm's great instructons and her "Beary Creative" Tear Bear Tool, it is so easy! I whipped this guy out in no time at all. I used fluffing brushes from The Beary Scrap to make him look soft and pettable, then went around the edges with black chalk. The small ovals that come with the dog were actually a perfect size for his spots so I used them all and then used larger ovals for the eyes. To make cheeks and put a little pink on the feet, I used blush (yes, actual makeup blush-- not the one I use for me but a spare I save just for craft projects.) Then I used fine tip black and white markers to add those last little details.



After decorating the bottom of my paint can with some black and pink paper to match (Bo Bunny's Double Dot Cardstock, black from Kaiser Craft and pink from the New Echo Park Life is Good line), I added my little puppy. Plus some punched shapes, tiny pink Prima flowers, Kaiser Craft pearls, My Little Shoebox tiny letters and some pink ribbon to embellish it a bit (this is not Clean and Simple week, so I just kept adding those little details I love!)


Finally, I made a Congrats tag and tied some ribbon to the handle to finish it all off. Once putting everything inside, my finished gift looks like this (sorry about the glare off the clear plastic, it was hard to get a good photo!):

And I think it's just as cute as can be. One gift down, one more to make for the shower next week (my other sister in law is having a boy so I will be making another one of these, just in blue and brown instead.)

I hope you are enjoying your "Dog Days" of summer, however you may be spending them. Make sure to get in as much fun as possible before those warm lazy days are gone for this year! And remember, to spend a little time paper crafting and enter our Stitches challenge, open until the last day of the month, for a chance to win a $20.00 voucher to The Beary Scrap!