Happy As A ...

 

PIG IN MUD!

My friend and I were at the shops last night buying gifts for 6 year old girls (panic!) and in the card section my friend happen to exclaim at the cuteness of a pig card.  So, since I wanted to avoid cleaning today anyway, I made one for her!

...probably she just awww'd at it because she thought it would be cute for a 6 year old girl.

First of all, I cut out a bunch of pink circles with some punches I have.  Large one for the body, smaller one for the head, even smaller for the snout and teeny ones for the ears!  I edged them all with a similar pink ink.

Piece together as above picture.  To add some dimension, use foam tape between the head and body and the snout and head.  Attach the little ear circles to the BACK of the head.  Find some silly goggle eyes and glue them on.  And finally, use a regular hole punch to create nostrils with black card.

I wanted to have nice rounded feet but because the legs are really no more than a centimetre wide, it was a little tricky to achieve ...so I went for pointy, still using my corner punch to make it as neat as possible.  Of course, me being me, I changed my mind later on and quickly rounded off the ends :)

Anyway, I inked the edges of the legs just as I did the circles.

Since he is a pig in mud, I used a brown ink pad and some cotton buds to gently apply some "mud" to the feet.  I started with a rolling action, to carefully apply the ink, then started to smudge it around a bit.

Stick the legs to the back of the body so that they're the desired length.  Smudge some more "mud" over the rest of the pig, wherever you like really!  No sense in having a happy pig in mud if it's clean!

I also used a cotton bud with pink ink to accentuate the ears a little, as well as shadows at the tops of the legs and under the chin.  I drew a mouth directly onto the pig's face because, you know, it's happy!  Plus without a mouth it was starting to give me the creeps..

I created the pig pen mud with brown card that I cut a gentle wavy design into the top of.  I then used the off-cut wavy design as the front layer of mud that the fence posts sit behind.  The fence is made, obviously, from ice cream sticks.  For the standing posts, I trimmed them down to about 3/4 length.  I roughly, but generously, rubbed a brown inkpad across each stick before sticking the mud and fence onto the card.

The order is:  Mud, fence, mud top layer, pig.  I used foam tape between the mud top layer and the fence; and the pig and the fence.  The pig's feet are stuck directly onto the top layer of mud.

I drew a curly tail directly onto the card (it's short in this picutre but you'll see I later extended it).  I had big plans for using string or wire or something curly but at the end of the day, this seemed easier  and less busy on an already busy card.

Next I decided (yes, I was working without a plan!) to add some colour so it would pop a bit more.  I created some tufts of grass by cutting out thin green triangles and then fussy cutting the spikes at the top.  Then I put a little tape behind them, slotted the bottom tips of them under the mud, so they were positioned against the fence, and stuck them down.

See?

I also decided to shorten the top layer of mud a bit.

The finishing touches:

• Lengthened the tail
• Using the same technique as with the grass, I punched a circle and fussy cut spikes to create a little sun to fill the top right corner  I trimmed it to fit the card after I stuck it down so that it would fit the corner perfectly.
• Fussy cut a little apple and leaf for the bottom right corner, again just to add a little colour
• Used my computer to create the "Happy as a ..." and " ... in mud!", cut them out and stuck em down!
• Used colour markers to draw tiny highlights onto the apple, leaf, grass and sun.
• Done!

Happy as a ...

Dani :)