A clowder of cats!

Good evening again!

Stampin' Up! have carried one of my favourite stamp sets over to the 2017-2018 catalogue. It's called "Pretty Kitty", and features a bundle of adorable cat stamps and sentiments.

The school I work at is having an art exhibition next week and I've been racking my brain trying to decide what to do for the teacher section. Seeing I am a crazy cat lady, and everyone (including the students!) knows it, I concluded that a crate of cats was in order. Interestingly, despite the fact that i tell anyone who will listen that I hate fussy cutting, I ended up doing it again! It came out looking like this:

This project featured Darius' big sister Lily as well, although she was more interested in standing in the way and trying to eat my necklace.

To start with, I stamped a whole heap of cats with the "Pretty Kitty" set on shimmery white paper. Then I shaded them with a variety of browns, greys and black using the Stampin' Up! blender pen. After that I used the blender pen again to shade the ribbons in different colours, and the Powder Pink marker to shade the little noses and open mouths. The tangled up kitten got Bermuda Bay on a blender pen for the wool. I lightly shaded around the strands to try and make it look fluffy.

I made sure I included a "Lily", and attempted a Darius but it didn't look like him. Most of the other cats are based on cats I have had or known.

It was when I was fussy cutting all the cats that Darius appeared, and we had serious words when he started trying to eat one!

Using the "Wood Crates" die and a piece of the retired Tip Top Taupe cardstock (I'm sad to see that In Colour depart for greener pastures), I cut out the two crate sections and a couple of extras with only the base part under the die. I used those to create little tabs for inside to hold cats up. While I was at the Big Shot (which I keep on my computer desk for space reasons, I also cut 3 hearts from Real Red card using the small die from the same set.

I glued the crate sections using Multipurpose Liquid Glue, and then fiddled with the inside tabs (I had to add a couple of little ones to space out the cats evenly. Darius thought that was very interesting.

Last of all, I glued all the cats in place. I did use some Dimensionals in there to add depths (I doubled up in some spots to make them higher/deeper). Then I attached the cat brads to the hearts after I had used the Piercing Tool to make a hole for them. I picked the brads up on eBay for some ridiculously small price - an impulse buy just because CATS!

If you have any questions, just let me know! I was trying to keep this shorter than my epic first post. Even though I am a "hobby demonstrator", I am more than happy to help you with any of the products you are interested in and can show you the latest catalogue and order for you (provided you're in Australia).

Comments are welcome - I will always reply!

MEOW!
Sara, Darius and Lily