Cats...

No, not the musical. Which I've never seen, though I loved Old Possum's Book of Cats and used to know a couple of the poems off by heart - Skimbleshanks the railway cat was my favourite, followed by the Jellicle cats.

I was making a card to share this week using a lovely Siamese cat image from Art Neko, and it prompted me to dig out a couple of old memories - and photos.

As a family, we always had cats, usually three at any given time. Many were rescues, but we had a couple of more pedigree ones, and one was indeed a Siamese; Pandora. It has to be said that of all our cats she was the least likeable in terms of personality, and most like what non-cat people think of as typically feline, selfish and self-contained. But - she did love travelling in the car and consequently came on a few family holidays with us, so here's a photo of me, aged about 8 or 9, up in Donegal, the north-west corner of the country.

My own cat, whom I had from when I was about four or five till - well, she stayed at home longer than I did and lived on till after I was married, was also more pedigree than most - a Siamese-Burmese. And she was a sweetheart. My mother said that when I was very small, she always knew when I had gone to sleep because that was when Andy would join the rest of the family downstairs until they went to bed and then she'd return to my room. At one stage my mother thought she wasn't doing my bronchitis any good and tried banning her from the bedroom, but after a couple of nights when she kept everybody awake throwing herself against my door and crying, the ban was revoked. When a car hit her and broke her back leg she still insisted on sleeping on the bed, and after a couple of years recovery time was soon back ratting again. She was a devoted mother - no rats for her kittens, she managed to catch and bring rabbits back to the house a couple of times while they were still little.

Brambles was a much later addition to the family, well after I had left home. His owners were moving, and my parents took him in. He'd previously been a 100% indoor cat, and for a couple of months he lived on his own in an upstairs room while he acclimatised to the idea of living with other cats - and a dog. But as you can see from the photo below, he took very happily to spending time outdoors in the sunshine.

The card was made very simply, I inked the image with markers and huffed before stamping. A lovely line image like that doesn't need much!

Flowers

Two cards using images from the set of 9 Flowered ATCs from Art Neko: the daffodils are really breaking out all over the place now and it's lovely to see. They brighten a grey day and make a brighter one shine.

Both were made with fun backgrounds - the daffodils was done using spray starch on glossy white card, sprinkled with Brushos and with cling-wrap laid over. The poppy was done for a direct-to-paper challenge, simply swiping some distress ink pads onto the paper, then embossing and dusting with the soft pink. The orange butterflies were a failed first attempt - I used an eraser while they were still damp, trying to removed excess chalk from the background. I did that alright, but I also caused the surface of the paper to pill so it was no longer suitable for use as a focal image.

The flower sentiment is also from Art Neko, and the Happy Birthday letters were formed by stamping a vertical birthday sentiment twice - the spacing between the letters was just enough to allow me to punch them out, so long as I edged the circles in black .

February Favourites

It's been mostly a dull grey month and not many photo opportunities, although I should upload a couple of photos of a tree that came down in the storm last week...I think the lack of colour in the weather has had me adding more than normal to my cards, looking at the selection I have made.

Anyway, here are my favourites from February. I know the poinsettia one is made for Christmas and I don't normally add Christmas cards, but...

When I went to the local € store near work, I wasn't expecting to find a simple white frame as perfect as this one, I was expecting to have to do some altering. The clean white was perfect for framing the sentiment and adding the paper shells on a washed background.

And given that I have absolutely nothing Alice-related on hand, I was very pleased with how this card turned out after my initial "where on earth do I start" reaction. I started, in fact, by downloading a wonderful set of Photoshop brushes, but it was so hard to preview each one that I gave up and resorted to simply downloading a couple of the images (since they are royalty free) and printing a quote. I thought the pop-up book format suited the theme well, and I had just received the vintage playing cards and time-piece collage sheets from Art Neko, who are now also handling the B-Muse.com site.

January Favourites

It's hard to believe that January is already over, I feel as if I blinked and it was gone, and I haven't achieved that much.

There weren't even all that many cards to choose from, but these are my favourites:

This one is a type of Z Box Fold card. When it's closed, the rainbow and rainbow sentiment are entirely hidden, so that you just see Sending Sunshine - luckily both those words are in a similar font.

C is not particularly (not much at all) romantic, and I have no use at all for Valentine's Day or love type cards - but I still had great fun making this one as one of my Art Neko cards for January. I know I had black paint, I used it for this - but it was nowhere to be found yesterday!

A Miscellany

It feels as I just stepped right back onto a merry go round after the Christmas break, and I still haven't even edited photos from our December Paris trip.  I wish it's something I could do while travelling down to Cork!

A few photos - the first one I took on the 2nd of January meaning to upload it as a New Year photo. They are always very prompt in changing the date over the main gate at Guinness.

It's been a very, very grey month mostly. The photo of Heuston was taking one of the mornings when I was availing of Irish Rail's seat sale to travel by train instead of bus. I know I have plenty of photos of the facade, but I've never seen it lit up in the Irish colours before.

It was also very, very murky when I spotted a grey wagtail on the mudflats the other morning. I had to up the ISO a lot to get the photos, but it's always a welcome splash of colour to spot one of these.

I spotted this little dwarf goat (actually there were two of them) walking home from the shopping centre one day. He had a wonderful thick coat, I wish I could have patted him. He was quite small, I don't think he'd have been even a metre high including his horns.

With all the grey gloominess I felt in need of a little floral  summery lightness, so I made this card for the Art Neko blog, full details in the link. There are some lovely floral images in a set of 9 ATC-sized stamps, and I'm looking forward to making time to stamp and colour some more of them.

Crane Circle

I shared a card on the Art Neko blog today which uses a crane medallion stamp. One of the reasons I chose the stamp is because it reminded me a lot of an embroidery I did many years ago, and since I didn't want to add a photo of the embroidery to my Art Neko post, I'm putting here. Don't look too closely at the matting - at the time I couldn't afford professional framing and even with a proper mat cutter, it ain't easy! Anyway these days it hangs in our bedroom because I got C a piece of metal wall-art for his birthday with a clarinet, so the embroidery had to be moved from its previous place.
A peek at the card - the full card is on the Art Neko blog, and the embroidery.

I really wanted to add colour to my sun, as in the embroidery; since it's a sold image I just used a q-tip to carefully remove all the black ink before stamping. I should have taken a closer look at the colours in the embroidered pine - I just went for a sort of pine-needle green. Next time I use the stamp I will remember to use two shades of colour!!

Lotus Blossom

A summer memory as winter hastens on apace - we've had several mornings with heavy frosts and an orange fog alert last weekend.

This card uses the Set of 9 Flowered ATC stamps from Art Neko. It's been coloured and sitting on my desk for a while, and I made a mess of the first background that I tried it out on. So today I simply used a stencil from TCW (it's meant to be a Navaho design, but I think it works for ripples) and misted with blue and gold sprays. The image itself is stamped on watercolour paper, heat embossed and coloured with Winsor & Newton watercolours. I finished it off with some large sequins to mimic the leaf shape (cut from a scrap of polished stone background mostly used for frogs) and some clear sequins and bling.

We had pancakes for dinner the other night - and one of them came out of the frying pan with a perfect little heart on it. We usually have them with freshly squeezed lemon juice and sugar, or warm maple syrup.

Summer and Winter (and autumn...)

A couple of cards using Art Neko stamps - I just love this snowman with his pail full of stars. I'm still trying to create a card that matches the idea in my mind inspired by one of the Mary Poppins stories - this one was for a technique challenge on Splitcoast to fill in the background with black dots, but it comes close to it.  I also feel a re-read of the Mary Poppins books coming on if I can find time.  I think the second one might be my favourite in the series but it's time to refresh my memory. I know I already shared this card in my October favourites, but I thought I'd tuck him in again into this post.

And I went for a summery feel with this sweet little mouse sleeping on a bed of strawberry leaves. It was the little teddy-bear tucked under the quilt beside the mouse that really got me here - and the nightcap!

I did a photo-tutorial for the pillow top background a couple of years ago - here it is:

And a couple of autumn photos. The tree with berries was growing in the community garden in Midleton, I was struck by the deep contrast between the glowing berries in the sun and the shaded part of the tree It almost looked like two different trees. The leaves were hard to capture as they were swirling in the wind; I spotted them on Sunday morning as I walked back from collecting a delivery of wool which was waiting for me in ParcelMotel.

Birds and a Squirrel

When I visit my dad, if the weather is fine we take a walk up to the community garden, he loves visiting the hens and ducks there. The first hen always makes me smile - I must look up the breed. I think it looks as if it's wearing trousers, and it hardly ever stands up enough for me to get a photo.
There are two ducks, three chickens (growing fast), and maybe about eight or so hens.

I was less pleased to see this squirrel on our garden wall the other day, but I think he was foiled by the squirrel-proof feeders and didn't make another appearance.

And a couple of birds on cards using stamps from Art Neko - I love the little Japonisme Owl. It was fun to turn it into a Christmas card!

I got the crane stamp because it reminded me of an embroidery I did which hangs on the wall downstairs - mine is an eagle, but still with that piney foliage.

I made another card a few weeks back with the little owl: there are a couple more photos and full details on the Art Neko blog HERE.

Pandas and Bamboos

I only have one single lonely panda stamp in my collection, and I was delighted to be able to get the Pandas and Moongates plate from Art Neko Stamps so that I now have a little troupe of pandas. I looked up the collective noun (inspired by Lorraine's educating me on the rout of snails) and found that a group of pandas is an embarrassment. How could a bunch of pandas be an embarrassment?? A bamboo of pandas sounds more promising, and inspired by that I am also picking out a couple of photos from our visit to a bamboo garden while in France this summer.

But first - here's my Panda card. I had already had to look up what Moon Gates were - a traditional feature in Chinese gardens. I'm more familiar with the Tori gate in Japanese gardens - there was one in the bamboo garden that we visited...

I stamped my panda on white card, and coloured the background and bamboo with Inktense pencils, then masked the panda and sponged in the background. I suppose I should have done a night sky and added a moon - perhaps next time.
I used old Cuttlebug Vintage Corner dies behind the image panel, and then a layer with a Spellbinders Fleur de Lis square embossed into it. The panda and decorative black panels are raised slightly from the base.

And here are some bamboos to provide a homely setting for him...When I finally get round to editing some more holiday photos, I'll provide a link to the site for the garden. We visited it on our way back north from Provence, as a way of doing something during the day and not simply driving for a full day. It was so peaceful and relaxing and we would go again and spend more time.

So Many Books

and not enough time, so very true!

I received the Bookmarks and Sentiments set of stamps from Art Neko, and this is one of them.

I started out with a dictionary page - but by the time I had sprayed it with this and that it was almost totally invisible, so I used another piece of the page on the finished card.

Anyway, for starters I stuck the dictionary page to some card and gessoed it, then added some die-cut cogs. After that I used a mixture of homemade misters and some Brusho acrylic shimmer mists, with metallic rub-ons for the cogs-  Inka and some from Craft-T. I then used some chunky metallic embossing powder, and finally some dots of white acrylic paint. The panel is edged with black paint and Stickles, and I added two strands of Mizuhiki cord with knots.
The bookmark image was stamped on white card and coloured with pencils. I don't think the flowers are meant to be poppies, but they remind me of the multicoloured Iceland poppies so I chose those colours. I layered it onto another piece of the dictionary page, added some clock hands, and then decided it needed a couple of little butterflies in the bright flower colours.

Books - Poirot and Me by David Suchet is sitting on the shelf and I need to read it soon before I have to return it to the library!

Here's another utility box - I took the photo a couple of weeks ago and didn't get round to uploading it from my phone. The colours go well with the card. This mermaid hangs out along the River Liffey, down near the Samuel Beckett bridge.