Sorry Siamese

When I posted my previous cat card, one of my regular commenters left a comment asking if I would try to colour one of the cat stamps as a Siamese. I figured I’d give it a go, and this is the result! So, this one’s in your honour, Samantha 😉

I am entering this card into five challenges. The layout comes from My Favorite Things‘ sketch challenge. Moving Along With The Times asked for a CAS card, and Pixie’s Snippets Playground asked for the inclusion of snippets. AAA Cards asked for blending (and my colouring involved a fair bit of that!) And Less is More (Edit – where it got showcased!) asked for something exotic – to me (having only ever owned moggies) a Siamese cat seems exotic, though I’m sure other people would disagree!

My starting point was, of course, the little cat. It is the taller of the cats from Simon Says Stamp’s Christmas Cats set, which I just adore! Whilst I do of course have a rough idea of what Siamese cats look like I figured it would be good to have a bit of a guide, so I did an image search and found some pictures of Siamese cats to draw inspiration from. I then got to work! I stamped him onto a snippet of creamy coloured paper (one with a bit more tooth to it than I had used on my other card, which helped the colour take better) and used my regular colouring pencils to colour it, and decided not to worry too much about light source as my primary concern was to get the look of the Siamese right.

I started by putting a light layer of black in all my darkest areas, then bringing it out with a darker brown, then a lighter brown and finally a yellow-brown. I went back over the layers many many many times to increase the saturation and get it blended just how I wanted. And honestly… I’m thrilled with how it turned out! Normally I would have added pink in the ears and for the nose, but (at least in the pictures I was using as reference) Siamese have dark ears and noses so I did that instead. The eyes and nose do seem to get a little bit lost in the dark of the face. If I had a glaze pen I would have gone over them to pick out the features a bit more.

At this point I still wasn’t certain where I was going with the card. Looking through my patterned paper stash however I found a snippet of this checkerboard pattern (I think it’s supposed to be a chessboard!) and thought it would make a very cute kitchen floor. I had the idea to add little pawprints (from Do Crafts’ Little Meow – Someone Special stamps) in brown pigment ink to look like muddy footprints. I stamped them kind of higgledy-piggledy across the “floor”. They don’t really show on the darker tiles, but I think it actually looks good that they don’t.

Next I decided to add my little sentiment, which just says “Oops!” I used Lawn Fawn’s Jessie’s ABCs to compose the sentiment. Though I haven’t actually done it yet, my intention is to stamp something along the lines of “I messed up!” on the inside, and have this as perhaps a belated birthday card. Problem is I rarely miss birthdays, so I’m not sure I’d ever have the opportunity to send it!

Finally I just needed to assemble the card. I used my tape runner to attach the piece of floor. For the cat, which I had fussy cut, I used a combination of tape runner and foam tape to give an interesting dimension to him.

I am really quite ridiculously pleased with how this card turned out, especially given I wasn’t sure what I was doing going into it! I think the colouring on the cat worked out fabulously, the premise of the card is adorable, and it all came together wonderfully. I didn’t even smudge anything this time! I also quite like how it came out monochromatic looking. It was not at all my intention going into the project, but it worked out nicely.

Love,

Lady Joyful