more dry embossed dots

I'm loving this new dry embossing with the paper piercing template so much, I decided to make another card using this technique. I haven't stamped a lot with the For Father set yet, and I absolutely love the images in it, so I decided to use it tonight, before the Occasions mini expires and this set is possibly gone forever (a few select sets from the mini catalogs do make it into the permanent catalogs, but the number is so small I've learned not to count on the future availability of any set, because I'd be mostly disappointed).

I chose the puppy dog image and, because the images in this set just beg to be water colored, I dug out my aqua painter. I stamped the image in basic brown on watercolor paper and colored it in using old olive, close to cocoa, creamy caramel, more mustard and pumpkin pie inks. I also lightly sponged the edges with chocolate chip ink and added a more mustard mat.

And that's when the paper piercing mat and stylus came into the picture. I'll be completely honest -- when I used this technique yesterday it didn't even occur to me to use the smallest dots -- I was quite happy just using the medium and large sizes. But when Amber left a comment that she had successfully done it with the small dots, I knew I had to try it as well, so I added a small dot dry embossed border around the old olive mat. And while I wouldn't recommend using this technique for dozens and dozens of swaps, using it on just card and just for a border on a small piece of card stock actually was not too bad. As you can see in the detail photo below, I had some trouble lining up the dots in a couple of the corner, but that's more of a function of the paper size than the technique. Overall I'm pleased with how it came out.

Once I attached the image to the old olive mat, I started dry embossing a strip of chocolate chip card stock with the large circle. This was much faster and easier! I attached the chocolate chip strip to the summer sun card base and stamped the get well sentiment in chocolate chip ink in the lower right hand corner. I thought this was a perfect sentiment for this image -- doesn't the little puppy just looks so forlorn because his master is too sick to take him for a walk?

As a final step I attached the image to the card base. I wanted to keep a masculine feel in this card, so I opted not to add any ribbon or embellishment (beyond the dry embossing, of course). And yes, I know it's almost the same layout as yesterday's card. I guess that's my other kick lately -- doing several different cards with the same layout. Anyway, I think it turned out very nice indeed. Hope you do too.