Construction Paper Pooch Tutorial

     If you're new to our blog....WELCOME!  We're glad to have you.  If you're a regular.....WELCOME BACK!  We're glad you still like us.  If you are a returning visitor you may have noticed that we have a new header with a bunch of cute dogs in the snow.  This was a crazy idea I had that came to fruition yesterday afternoon.
     Pictures and images grab my attention just like everyone else so I thought it was a little hypocritical that all we had for a header was some dinky text.  I know it sounds terrible, especially since I'm a big supporter of content but lets be real, sometimes first impressions matter.  So after a little brainstorming and some late night adult cartoons I had an idea.  I figured if South Park can make cute little people and animals, out of construction paper no less, then we can too.
     We decided to meet at Kelly's and after a little trip to her giant Joanne Fabric(we were only in there for an hour, a new record), and some quality time with her pooches we got started.  This is how we made the construction paper version of all the dogs.  (We did this with our dogs but you can apply the technique for any picture.)

Stuff you need:
Construction paper in the colors of your dogs coat, tongue, eyes and any other accessories you want
Tracing paper
Scissors
Glue 
Pencil
Crayons

1.  Take a picture of your dog and print it out.  Try and make sure you have a lighter background behind your pooch so you can see the outline easier in the next step.  This was something we figured out after it was too late.

2.  Place tracing paper over your picture and, in pencil, trace over the outline of your dogs body and head.  Pencil is better cuz you don't want a bunch of mistake lines complicating anything.

3.  Now here's the tricky part.  Imagine your dog in layers.  We'll use Gidget as an example.  In this traced image there are 4 layers.

• Head
• Mouth
• Body
• Back legs and tail

When you figure out your layers cut them apart from each other like above.  Now trace those pieces onto your construction paper.

4.  Before you get excited and cut out your construction paper pieces you need to add a little extra on to each one of them so that you have a spot to glue them together.  See the diagram below.

5.  Go ahead and cut out your pieces.

6.  Flip all your pieces over.  Your dog is going to end up as the mirror image of the original picture.  This is just a preference so you don't see any of the pencil marks.

7.  Now if your dog has any color variations like a little white patch on her chest or, like Gidget, a bunch of white fur mixed in, you can add those colors with your crayons.  Crayons are great for this cuz they have a more variable coverage that you can easily control with the amount of pressure you use.

8.  Now you get to make any accessories for your pooch that you want.  We added a little collar for 4 of the dogs and since you can't really see Abby's collar we gave her a seasonal accessory.  (Winter is an evergreen tree.)

9.  Assemble your dog first to make sure you don't want to change anything and then go ahead and glue your layers together from top to bottom.

10.  Tada!  You're done.  Now just check out how close our dogs came to their original pictures.  Pretty awesome.

Craft on!
Anita

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