Past Projects: Animal Card #2

Since it's Christmas eve, first let me wish everyone who's reading this a very very MERRY CHRISTMAS! I know I should be posting about christmas cards that I've made this year, but since I haven't sent out all of them, I decided not to(: Also, this year's christmas cards can easily be tweaked to use for any other holiday season! Although personally, I wouldn't do that since that same pattern adorned the last 20 or so cards that I did and I need to do something different. So, this year's christmas card design and writeup will probably be some time later(: Instead, I decided to finish off the second animal card I did, so here is my "Happy Baaaaa-thday" card for another special friend of mine!

For me, the greatest lesson in the making of this card would have to be the making of the sheep. Cotton wool really gives a very nice fluffy and squishy texture, but it is definitely one of the harder materials to handle. 

The challenge-inducing sheep

This one was slightly tougher, because I didn't base it off any picture from the internet, partly because I didn't really like the sheep images that google kept churning out for me. So, I started off with a beige coloured oval as the base. You'd want to keep the base slightly smaller than the actual size of what you want your sheep to be, because cotton wool, (for lack of a better word) tends to poof out in all directions. Initially I did the sheep with a circle base. But I realised an oval looks much more life-like.

this is the circle-base sheep. of course if you prefer this one, go ahead(:

Then comes the tricky part: deciding which adhesives to use. For the first batch of sheeps (I made three batches altogether) I tried to use white glue, because I thought that would hold it better. I ended up throwing that batch away because white glue tends to be very messy. And cotton wool by itself is a very messy material too. So two messy materials placed together creates an even bigger mess, because when glue dries, it solidifies...along with the cotton wool that's encased in it, causing it to lose it's puffiness. You'll end up with a drenched sheep. The second batch I made I used double sided tape, taping the entire circle before rolling the cotton wool into little balls. The problem with doing this is that double sided tape is only one layer, therefore, the moment a little bit of the fuzz from the cotton wool balls got onto it, the tape loses it's stickiness. 

Lesson learnt: Don't work with cotton wool.

okay, I kid. But cotton wool is definitely going to be very time consuming, very messy. If you still want to do it (because it does give a great effect), try using double sided tape. It works much better than glue, but put it on a little bit at a time. Also, before placing the cotton wool balls down, roll them tightly, even if they don't look that fluffy, it's okay. That's because you can always readjust the amount of poofiness of each cotton wool ball after you've stuck it down. 

Next, affixing the head on. whether you want the sheep to face left, right or front, one lesson I learnt is to leave a space for the head on the animal's body. In other words, if the sheep is facing front, I have a sheep head-shaped 'hole' on the body where there wasn't cotton wool stuck on it. That makes sticking the head on a lot easier for you. The head, ears and legs were basically free-hand drawn by me, but they should be quite easy to do. The head is egg shaped, the ears look like elongated tear drops, and the legs are rounded rectangles. 

three sheep in a row. And the star is there to hide my foot which somehow wormed it's way into the photo

After that, I cut out clouds from blue construction paper and grass from green construction paper. I also found some flower designed scrapbook paper and decided to cut out circles to make the colour balance look slightly more feminine. The "Have a Happy Baaaa-thday" tagline was written on vellum, which is a great way to write words without covering up your design. 

So that's all for the animal cards! Next up in the past project series will be some more birthday cards that you can easily make for your friends. I'm hoping to showcase cards for both sexes, because masculine looking cards are just so difficult to make!(:

Till next time, and to all my readers, Have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!