I have been participating in a chain card swap for the past few months. It’s a fun activity where you make a card and send it along a chain of participants. Each person copies and edits the card before passing it on until it returns to the original sender, often looking quite different.
For round nine of this blog hop series, I created a fun watercolour background card using the Doggone Friendly background stamp from Stampin’ Up! inspired by Carolina’s card chain and the version of Carolina’s card created by Nancy. It’s no secret that I LOVE dogs and have two Golden Retrievers; Loki & Thor so using this background stamp was so much fun! See the end of this post to see everyone’s version of this card.
the finished doggone friendly WATER COLOURED card

I won’t lie – this card did take a while and was a labour of love! I actually water coloured this whole background with A LOT of different neutral colours – but it’s rather therapeutic to make projects like this. A little secret is that I already has this background made when I received Nancy’s card and so when I saw her design with a fun spotlight technique – I knew it right away that it would suit this Doggone Friendly water coloured background piece.
You can actually see me water colour one of these and some tips & ideas for it in this tutorial here.
the spotlight technique on this fun card

I was inspired by Nancy’s card with her fun spotlight technique featuring the Simply Zinnia’s bundle and wanted to replicate this on my card featuring the Doggone Friendly Background stamp. To do this I simply used the great Stylish Shapes dies which feature these fantastic stitched circle designs and chose a couple of the doggies featured on this stamp to cut straight out of my background – I featured the dog that looked most like my Golden babies of course! I also used a smaller circle to balance this in the top right corner. You then simply cut a slightly larger circle and place these pieces straight back into the negative piece raised on some Stampin’ Dimensionals. Such a fun technique!
a simple & funny inside message

I featured the great sentiment set called Saying Hey from the annual catalogue. I love the witty sentiments in this set – they are perfect for so many occasions. Sometimes adding a casual or witty statement is all you need to finish off a card!
This was a fun card to make and I really enjoyed seeing the progression of the card throughout the chain.
You can see the whole ‘chain’ of card in the series and how the card has evolved below.
I suggest following it in order from number one onwards to see the true progression of the card.
Until next time, crafty hugs. xx

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So nice! I love the sentiments, too!
Love the way you have used this stamp and the way you have coloured all the cute doggies!
The spotlight technique! Loved choosing this for my round. A fabulous creation – this dog set is so popular