Cheng Yan's Chinese Cat

Here is another cat by Cheng Yan. This stamp is available from Onyx Expressions and the red kanji for 'Cat' is also by them too. The beautiful red paper is called 'Asia' and I got it from The Fruit Pixie.

Talking of Chinese cats, here is another one ...

Nuff said :)

Have a lovely day today and thanks for visiting my blog ...

Kimono Kitty

My favourite stamp of all time is this gorgeous cat in a kimono by Art Neko. I have a larger version too. I haven't used these for absolutely ages and I feel sorry for neglecting them. The kanji is 'Cat' and I stamped it with Brilliance gold but because the card is a bit thick it absorbed much of the gold shininess. I used a small piece of beautiful Japanese paper as a kind of picture for the cat to look at, it was too nice to be used as a background paper.

Do you think a cat in a kimono is unlikely? Well Hana PetWear would disagree. Check out their beautiful kimonos for cats and dogs.


I've ordered 3 for Miaowski!!!! No, I haven't actually but I'd like to :)

Well it has been absolutely gorgeous here in the UK. The sun has been shining all weekend and we are due for a whole week of it - how nice is that? Well, I will have to be out as much as possible which will probably mean I won't be doing so much card making this week. Unless, of course, I get inspired. I'm lacking inspiration at the moment, think the sun has zapped it out of my head!

Have a happy Monday. Thanks for stopping by ...

Chinese Cat

There is a beautiful painting called Chinese cat by an artist called Cheng Yan. I've always loved it and wished I had a painting on my wall. So I was very happy to see Onyx Expressions has a rubber stamp of it. Onyx Expressions do beautiful stamps and have a large selection of Oriental rubber stamps. And a large selection of cat stamps too. And they have both of Cheng Yan's cat images. I will show his other one another time.

But for now I did this one embossed in gold. That beautiful background is actually vellum and I got it from my friend's craft shop (it isn't in existence anymore I'm afraid). I'm sure it could be found again somewhere on the internet.

I'm not sure what's happened to the summer temperatures but they have dipped too low again and I spent all day yesterday feeling very cold. Especially as my flat gets no sun so feels I'm living in a cave. I had salad for lunch and was so cold I had to make soup to warm me up! I went to bed wearing gloves!! Honest, I did. Trouble is, I woke up in the middle of the night burning up with heat and wondering why I was wearing gloves. Miaowski was sleeping on my feet sending pulses of heat up my legs - I thought I was on fire!

Hope it's warm where you are today. Thanks for stopping by ...

Cats

I fell in love with these Party Cats stamp set from Clear Art Stamps. I love vintage cat images, there is something so cute about cats dressed as little humans. And I like the little pun sentiments that come with them, too cute :)

This was just a simple card I made, with the addition of my favourite red brads and Stampin Up scallop and oval punched shapes for the sentiment. Normally I would have gone for just a red, black and white card and not coloured in the image. But for some reason I forgot and coloured in the last cat's jacket in blue. So I carried on and coloured in the other cats.

Yesterday I was watching the local news about the Royal Bath and West Agricultural show. All the animals are beautiful, what with being primped and cosseted to look their very best. There was a farmer spraying a cow with what he called a 'setting agent' to make it's hair stand up. Made me giggle, cos he meant 'hair spray' I think. And then there was another farmer with a huge pig that he was trying to make shiny by rubbing oil all over it. I could just imagine the pig escaping and him not being able to catch it cos of it being slippery with the oil. Then there were the horses with their manes beautifully plaited and hanging down on one side with pretty pink ribbons. I don't know, I found it quite fascinating because it was these big burly farmers that were doing all this beauty stuff on their animals.

Think I might take Miaowski and maybe they could give her a make-over and pretty ribbon :)

Yay, the weather is nice and warm today, it's going to be beautiful for the next few days. Thanks for stopping by ...

Birdy Friend

I made this card using some free papers given away in PaperCraft magazine. As well as dots, I like stripes too, especially in these colours. I separated the papers with some adhesive ribbon (by Anitas). The cat is by Judikins and I gave her a nice pink gem collar. The bird in the cage, with sentiment, I bought from Lakeland Plastics when they were selling craft goodies - don't think they do them anymore.

I'm lost for words today (I know, it's a miracle!). So I'm keeping this short.

Have a lovely day and thanks for stopping by ...

C is for Cat and I won a Challenge!

Just a quick mini card for today. Over here in the UK, Stampin Up have introduced the new colours and this is one of them. Melon Mambo is replacing Pink Passion, I really love this colour, it's one of my favourites and I love the fact ythere is this matching gorgeous grossgrain polka dot ribbon.

My friend Monica makes lovely cards and she sent me one recently I liked a lot. It was a simple design but very stylish. So I tried to reproduce it but not as good as her version unfortunately. I used SU's 'C for Cat' set (another ebay bargain!). I hadn't intended to use the gems but seeing as a great gunk of glossy accents dropped onto the card, I had to cover it up with something! I used glossy accents to stick the ribbon down, works great - there is no way that ribbon will ever fall off that card!

I won a challenge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited, it's the first one I've won so far. Over at Inkurable Stampers they had a black, red and white challenge for April and I won as an Inkurable Newbie. I won these stamps at Darkroom Door. I'm thrilled! Ooooh maybe I will try and enter more challenges now, I don't do them too often as I look at the other entrants and think they look so much better than anything I can think of.

Has anyone seen the UK's 2012 Olympic mascots yet? China's Olympics celebrations were amazing and they had cute mascots. What exciting idea would the UK have? Oh yes, of course, I'm really sure that one eyed aliens (called Mandeville and Wenlock - why?) represent what the UK is all about!!!!!!!!! OMG I do worry about this country sometimes. You have to take a look to believe it. Apparently they are being seen as a key money spinner for the Olympics? How? The 'designers' were talking about them on the radio this morning saying they wanted the design to be 'all inclusive'. Is it me, or do some people talk a load of drivel???

LOL! I better go before I offend anyone!

Thanks for stopping by ...

My first stipple

This is my first go at stippling instead of brayering a background. It worked out really well. No lines and no white gap around the moon, hurray! This came out a bit light and I tried adjusting the levels in photoshop but just couldn't get it right.

Can you see there is a weird looking giant bonsai tree on the distant mountain in front of the cat? Well that was an ink splodge that shouldn't have been there. I was so annoyed after finishing the card. I thought how the heck did that get there? I was about to chuck the card in the bin when I grabbed my pen and tried turning it into a tree. It looked better before the mistake but never mind.

The cherry blossom tree is from Lavinia Stamps and the cat is from Rubber Stamps of America. I'm not sure where I got the bamboo plant from, it was from a japanese set of stamps. I did the 'stars' with a white gel pen. Oh, and I coloured in the blossoms with a pink Sakura Souffle pen, I like the puffiness it gives after the pen dries. Inks for the background were TH Mustard Seed and Adirondack Eggplant.

Meanwhile, back at the PaperCraft@Taunton show. There was one stall there selling Penny Black stamps. I love PB stamps but haven't used mine that much. However, when I saw all the lovely cards the lady from Butterfly Kisses had made, I was inspired. So I bought two stamps! I loved this gorgeous one with the bunnies in the pots. I don't think I would have bought the stamp if I hadn't seen this card
You can't see in the picture but the pots are really glossy with glossy accents. And the bunnies and flowers are are so beautifully decoupaged. Wow, I hope I can reproduce this as well as this example. Mind you, those whiskers are cut out so finely, I wonder if I can do it without cutting them off?

Back with another picture from the show tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by ...

For the love of Cats

Another thank you card to my friend Gill who also sent me lovely presents. Like me, Gill loves cats, and owns a black cat called Cillan, so I thought she might like this.

The cat image is from Third Coast Rubber Stamps and the sentiment from Hero Arts. The beautiful background is vellum. It is the best vellum I've seen, I love the colours. The little red brads with white spots are from Papermania.

Talking of loving cats... how could I not love this cat? The towel was on the radiator and she pulled it off and snuggled up on it. Anyone would think she hasn't got her own bed. Actually she has a luxury bed but prefers sleeping in her box ... and now my towel!

Doing the worm walk, kitty style

No you are not seeing things... yes it really is two posh cats taking their pet worm out for a walk - ha ha, my favourite rubber stamp image. It's so funny and I love that the lady cat's muffler has dead mice in it, very tasteful! I got it from 100 proof press - a great rubber stamp company that has the quirkiest images ever.

I haven't used it much but while reading Tim Holtz's book I was wondering what vintagey image I had that I could distress and so I came up with my two posh cats. I didn't really do much to the card. Just inked some Broken China and Faded Denim around the image and then repeated that on the base card. Then I tried dropping water onto the inks to create patterns although that didn't really work as well as I'd liked. After, I stamped some Inkadinkado swirls in the corners.

The sentiment at the bottom is an SRM sticker, just liked the subtle look of it.

A closer look... not sure if you can see the detail that well, try clicking on it, check out the poor dead mice in the muffler. Don't know why I just find that so cute, I must be sick!

I'm heading back to 100 Proof Press to check out their other amusing 1920's cats.

Thanks for stopping by...

9 Cats

Had more fun with this digital kit. This time I changed all the cat's sizes and colours and put them with this digital sentiment by Squigglefly. I had a lot of white space so used some Stampin Up punched hearts to fill it.

I have a ton of cards I need to make. I'm hoping to get a lot done today. I can't believe Easter is almost a month away and also Mother's day is coming up and then there are quite a few birthday cards to do.

Thanks for stopping by