This year's Cat Present

As usual, I'm making a crazy cat of some kind for my friend, Lynne, who has a huge collection. Most of her stuff is stunningly beautiful; some of it is whimsical; some of it is cute. I think I'm the only one who ever makes a gift. (But to be on the safe side, in case the gift turns out to be totally disappointing, I buy something nice as well.)

If you're read this last year, you know the cat I made was worse than crazy; it was downright scary.

This year I decided to try some kind of painting/collage. I started with a canvas and sketched in a silhouette of a cat staring at a full moon. I used a coffee saucer to make the circle (and as you see, I didn't stay in the lines precisely when I painted the moon.)

Next, I tried something different. I used some grout I had left over and filled in the cat sketch with the grout. When the grout dried, I painted it black, then used some of last year's leftover cat material to glue something I thought would resemble bamboo. (It didn't). Since that didn't please me (and it was too much trouble to try to remove it, I gathered some twigs and glued them down.

I'm thinking this is close to ready. Maybe, after I sleep on it, I'll add something more. I don't know. Meanwhile, I'm going shopping to find a "nice kitty" to wrap.

Can't Sleep So Sharing Stuff

When sleep decides it wants to play games with me, I usually pick up the laptop and start surfing around the blogs and sites looking for spiffy recycling artists and crafters. Since it is the Christmas season, I thought I'd try to focus on some of the things I found tonight that focus on handmade gifts created with found or left-over items.

At RecycleCindy's site, there's a nifty plam snowman. (Don't worry. If you don't know what plam is; I didn't either but there's a link on the site that explains how to create it. It's merely "yarn" made from those notorious plastic grocery bags.)

For the last minute decorations, Becky Striepe's blog features a video that shows step by step how to make super starts out of recycled cardboard -- that's the kind you get from cereal boxes and shirt stuffers and the like. It's a quick tutorial and should take not time to master. Beware, though. She introduces this blog post with a beautiful photo that will have you shivering.