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.

And so it ends ... almost

Finally, here's the end result of the egg carton Christmas decoration. It's not actually the end; there's more for me to do to make it classy. I'm just showing the next step so those of you who are wondering where the heck this thing is going will have a clue. Creative types will take it from here; I will move on.

Speaking of moving on, I don't know how bloggers do it. My co-worker Mike, who has this super blog, has a full-time job, is a musician, an artist, a (very, very) close friend to Michelle, is able to socialize (see movies, dine out, do the wii thing) and STILL manages to blog almost daily!

Me, I have a full time job, am not a musician or artist, don't have a close friend, hardly ever socialize, and I can barely make a meal and do the dishes without running out of time.

I remind myself of an old Seinfeld routine.

Even sleeping a mere six hours a night doesn't help. Sheeesh!

But when I started this blog, I wasn't thinking of it as a diary. I was just hoping to get some different web experience and to get my sister (the amateur photographer with a great eye) to put some of her work on display.

I sort of accomplished both but now I realize I have to develop some discipline. I have to either continue to post -- frequently -- or drop the whole thing.

Tune in next week to see which way my wind is blowing.