Some dies are more evocative than others. When I was asked to demonstrate Rupert Red
Setter all sorts of happy childhood memories came flooding back…
When I was about ten years old, more years ago than I
care to remember, we had two Red Setters, Copper and Kelly. Copper was the real character of the two and
the one I remember most of all.
Copper was the archetypal Red Setter shape – an arched
back, concave stomach and a beautiful shiny coat. No matter how much exercise
he got, no matter how many times in a day we would walk him or how far we would
walk him, he would always sneak out if one of us had been careless enough to
leave the back door open.
In complete contrast Kelly was fat and lazy. Everything
was just too much trouble for Kelly; you could leave the back door open for her
and she would just lie down on the door mat and look at the outside world until
she nodded off – which was often.
But Copper loved Kelly. Copper loved Kelly so much that he would get
up on his hind legs and reach up and open every door in the house to get to the
fridge. He also worked out pretty
quickly how to open the fridge door. So
having opened four or five doors, he would open the fridge door then sit back
and watch while Kelly gorged herself on the contents of the fridge. By the time
she’d finished the kitchen floor looked like a war zone and my Dad would be
beside himself with rage. The strange thing was, with all this free food
around, Copper never ate a morsel, choosing instead to leave it all for Kelly.
Poor Dad had to put the door handles on upside down to
put an end to Copper’s antics!
So as I said, just one look at the Rupert Red Setter
die and all those memories of Copper, and many more besides, came to me with
such clarity it felt like it was yesterday. And as it was my brother’s birthday
last week there really was only one die I wanted to use on his card!
After cutting out the die I used my alcohol pens to
add in some of the shading and I used Rare Earth ink pads and Rare Ink brushes
to colour in Copper – erm, I mean, Rupert!
I kept the card nice and simple – I used a Rare Earth
Mask to create the background, which I attached to a Kraft card base.
My brother rang on his birthday and told me how bowled
over he was by the card. The picture on the card, to him as well as me, was
Copper…
Strange how a simple picture can take you back over
the decades…
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