Cat Lovers Hop 2017

One of my favourite blog hops of the year!

It comes at the end of a busy week - 27 October is (Inter)National Black Cats Day, 29 October is not only Psoriasis day (a predisposing factor to my particular flavour of Arthur*) and...

...(inter)National Cat Day!

Every year Janis at HerPeacefulGarden hosts a blog hop full of all kinds of crafty cat projects.  Please click on the blog hop image or clickable link and see the full line up of awesome cat projects!

Last year I did a layout so this year I thought I'd mix it up a bit with a card...or two!

This year's cards started with this:

I had a fair bit of my franken pink marbly embossing paste left from yesterday's layout, so I grabbed a sheet of white cardstock and my Dyan Reaveley cat stencil and salvaged the rest to use later.

It occurred to me that it could make a nice background for a cat card so I went in that direction.  Choosing a stamp would be harder.  I have as many cat stamps as I do coffee themed ones, but in the end I decided to go with a Saturated Canary image called "Crafty Cat".

I wanted to bust out the Copics again since I feel really rusty and I'm trying to get more practice with smaller images and more detail - not to mention practising various cat breeds and colours.

I still want to improve with black, grey and white cats,  I'm not sure I'll ever get the hang of the complicated coat that is Torbie with its colouring and then unique markings on top of that!

I discovered a friend has a Bengal cat a few weeks ago!  A very cool and unique breed! I tried colouring the second of my two Crafty Friends as a Bengal.

SmallCraftyDude has been obsessed with Egyptian Mau cats.  These guys are really unique so if you have some time, have a read about them.  I find it fascinating that many of their physical attributes are still very similar to ancient breeds rather than modern domestic cats.

So cat trivia aside, back to my cards.  I rarely
colour just one image at at time - it eases the pressure of not making mistakes and helps ease back into something I often feel a bit rusty with.  I remembered how much I need more markers!  I'd like to do a greater variety of skin and hair tones at the very least.

So...I fussy cut my images, trimmed the pink embossed cat card fronts to size, rounded corners and I used whatever ink was left on my ink blending tools from my last few galaxy cards just to define the edges a bit.  I love how Distress Ink feathers softly as it wicks into the paper.


The twine and button came after a sleepless night knowing my cards didn't look quite "right".  🙄

I have a few craft themed stamp sets and the sentiment is from "Crafty Friends" by Altenew and the thought bubble from "Just Thinking of You" by Neat and Tangled just managed to squeeze around the sentiment.  Some vellum heat embossed in black was softer than cardstock and I decided I was done!

(oh except for Ranger's Glossy Accents over the glasses!}

*Acronyms in left sidebar! <----

Love and happy colouring!