FROM THE HERD

Well, HOWDY from the herd!

When I first saw the stamp set, From the Herd, in the Occasions Mini, my first thought was, "Oh, that's adorable. But . . . when would I ever use it?" And proceeded through the rest of the catalog, only to put these pasture beauties out of my mind.

But, then, the INTERNET came into play. And all those Stampin' Up! demos and non-demos were demonstrating just how CUTE and versatile this set could be. But, N O . . . And I discovered more great ideas using From the Herd. Well . . . NOPE! Then there was MORE! FINE! And I succumbed. And am I glad I did.

BECAUSE . . .

This image is perfect for FUSSY CUTTING!!! Yayyyy! I was in heaven. 

I chose some very herd-like colors from among my Stampin' Up! cardstock. And started stampin' away. And, the rest is, as they say, herd-story. 

Snip. Snip. Snip.

After several days of cutting (and going half blind!), this was how my bunch turned out <to pasture>.

After finally arriving at this point, I decided to let it mellow awhile. Not quite sure how I wanted to proceed. I looked at the herd day after day until finally those Paper Seedlings took root and an idea melded.

I grabbed my favorite neutral color, Soft Suede, and put a few pieces of that color through my Big Shot inside the Woodgrain Embossing Folder. Placing those embossed pieces behind the herd looked cool, but not quite cool enough. Hmmm.

How about if I did my best to make it look like a real fence??!? 

So I cut those embossed pieces into strips of slightly varying widths. Staggering the space between the slats as well as making the tops and bottoms of each fence board somewhat uneven, then adhering it to a dark -- Early Espresso -- background piece made it look so realistic I needed to rub my eyes to make sure it had not morphed into a REAL FENCE. Just kidding. But, I was happy with the way it looked.

While the herd looked good against the fence, it still looked a bit naked. So I added a wee strip of black around the Naturals White background atop a bit larger piece of Cajun Craze to bring out the beautiful rustiness of the big guy's coat.

Much better. However . . . 

It still needed a little something more to look, I don't know, more farm-y. 

Since Soft Suede meshes so well with soon-to-retire Baked Brown Sugar, and I just so happened to have some of the Thick Baker's Twine in that color, I knotted a length of it into a loose lasso and held that in place. I showed my husband to seek his advice. He didn't like the "rope". I just did not care if he liked it or not -- after all, what does he know?? -- and I ADHERED MY LASSO with a Glue Dot to the upper right of the piece. And I was HAPPY. 

This angle show some of the cute characters looking sort of 3-D:

And here is the herd from the opposite angle:

I have to admit that the first piece I finished cutting out was one of the goat's eyeballs. As soon as I completed my last snip, it immediately fell from my grasp, only to lose itself in the nap of the carpeting at my feet. I never did find it. But it DID worry me that hopefully this wasn't an omen of how the rest of the cutting would go. I had a few mishaps along the way, and it, of course, is far from perfect, but I think it all came together quite well. 

Here is a close-up of my so real-looking lasso:

Well, HELLO, HERD. How are all you cuties??

I had purposely made the background to measure 8" x 10" from Naturals White cardstock so I could eventually fit it into a standard-sized frame.

We had just moved in November, and I KNOW I moved enough frames with us to open my very own framing store. But, unfortunately, the downstairs storage area is still filled with sealed-up boxes. My frames are in there somewhere. But where? 

After doing a brief, half-hearted digging through the boxes, I unearthed a box that contained frames. Ugh. Most of the frames were of the 4" x 6" or 5" x 7" variety. 

Only one measured 8" x 10". It was a natural wood, still in its little protective cardboard corners. I decided to give this less-than-perfect frame a try, and yanked off those little corners.

Arrrghhh!! The corners that were meant to PROTECT the frame actually had RUINED it. Where the corners had been, the wood was several shades lighter that the rest of the frame. I attempted to blend the colors together with ink, paint. No good. It looked awful. I tried sanding and sanding and sanding it. But that didn't help either.

For a brief time, I left it in that frame, telling myself I would get accustomed to the look. 

Last Monday, I showed it to the girls at my Stamp-In Workshop. I told them that I thought that ideally it would look best in a barn wood frame. They agreed. So I set off on a mission to find the perfect frame. I mean, after all, I knew that in the plethora of frames that I still had buried, there was nothing even remotely like what I had in mind.

I discovered the PERFECT frame for my piece. Of course, I could not keep the glass over the image because I wanted it to be displayed in all its three dimensional glory. So, I actually put the glass BEHIND the image. Weird, huh? But it works.

Anyway, see how well it matches with my Soft Suede fence??

And with my REAL lasso in Baked Brown Sugar??

The completed framed piece measures 11 1/2" x 13 1/2". And I am so happy.

And GOODBYE from the herd!

Herdful

Smiles.