Southern Girls - Animals

It's time for a new challenge at Southern Girls today and we're being sponsored by the fabulous Oak Pond Creations. The design team were given some fun images to work with for this challenge and so I chose this cheeky chappy, as I had an idea in mind the minute I saw him! 

My baby brother is heading overseas soon with his lovely wife, to explore that side of the world. So my hubby and I were telling them of a fabulous restaurant experience that we had while in France at this great little bistro in Les Halles called Au Chien Qui Fume. My hubby is a real joker, but he doesn't speak a word of French, so I thinking I was really clever ordered off the menu thinking I was going to be served up a lovely leg of pork, but my hubby not prepared to go with anything unknown decided he'd try the 'Coq au Vin' which of course was fantastic! I however became the butt of the joke when my order arrived and turned out to be 'foot of pork' not leg of pork and I was left with a gluey knuckle-boney yucky meal. Which the local Frenchmen at the table beside us, who'd ordered this dish on purpose, thought was hilarious. So my hubby, not knowing any real French, looked at them, and wryly came out with 'Viva le Poulet'. Well we were great friends by the end of the night, as they tried to converse with us in broken English and we tried in broken French. It was a really fun night even the waiters were joining in and all thanks to my hubby's sense of humour and his chicken joke. So when I saw this lil' fella, I knew I had to make a 'happy travels' card for my brother and his wife, who we'd recently shared this fun travel story with.

I've used a gingham paper to hint at the traditional French gingham bistro tablecloths and some fabulous Raspberry Road digital paper, the brick and travel postcard scene from their 'Travelogue' paper collection. I needed to tie in the 'Cog au Vin' and couldn't find a digital stamp that had anything like what I was looking for, so I translated an English recipe into French and printed it out in a nice font, onto another page from the Travelogue set, which had a nice aged tea-stain look to it, and then stamped the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink using a LOTV edge set called 'Grunge Corners'. I edged all the papers with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The Eiffel Tower die is from a Magnolia Doohickey Magazine as is the little tag die, which I inked with another LOTV stamp set called 'Background Bits - Industrial'. It has a fab French themed stamp in there. The 'Have Fun' sentiment is an old LOTV stamp I finished off this Parisian themed card with a splodge of hot sealing wax and a seal with a parchment and feather pen, though this detail is lost in this photo sadly. 

Well that's it, me being quick, LOL. I do try! Dinner guests arriving shortly and I need to get cracking with prep. so I'll catch you again soon with another crafty adventure. Hugs, Wends x

Challenge Entries:
Papertake Weekly: Anything Goes
Addicted To Stamps: #143 ~ Holiday
I <3 Promarkers: #268 ~ Anything Goes
Moving Along With The Times: Birds and/or Feathers
Penny's Paper-Crafty Challenge: #226 ~ Anything Goes
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Let's Get Sentimental
Crafting Musketeers: #25 ~ Use A Diecut (Happy Birthday Crafty Musketeers!)