Christmas Cats

I seem to be on a bit of a watercolour kick recently. Today’s card is cute cats rather than the florals that most of my recent watercoloured cards have been. I definitely had fun with this, experimenting with different looks for the cats.

I started by cutting a piece of watercolour paper to the size of my card front. I then marked the centre and added my sentiment which is from Simon Says Stamp’s Christmas Cats set. I stamped it in black then heat embossed in clear.

Next I started adding my cats. I used both of the cats from the stamp set and alternated them. The shorter (closed eyes) cat went in each of the corners, and the taller cat filled the gaps in between. I stamped accessories for some of the cats, masking as required. I intended to have them all random, but unintentionally created a pattern of sorts – the antlered cats are opposite those with scarves, and the Christmas hatted cats are opposite the unadorned. Completely unintentional!

With everything stamped out I started on the colouring. I mixed up a wash of pale yellow-brown and applied it to my first cat. From then on I added more colour to my paint before moving on to another cat at random, giving a more red or brown tone as I went. For the last two cats I added a lot of black to the mix so that I could have a grey and then a black (or dark grey, I guess) cat.

Once the base layer of each cat dried I went back in to add features. Three of the cats got stripes, two got blobs/spots, one became Siamese, and the remaining two are just solid coloured. When the cats themselves had fully dried I went back and added colour to the noses and inner ears.

I then moved on to painting all the accessories. I again wanted them to all be slightly different. I used two different shades of red for the Christmas hats, two greens for the scarves which I then also used for the headbands on the antlered cats. The antlers were also different on each cat.

I decided to add some gold to the accessories on the cats. I put stripes on one scarf and dots on the other. The inner ears of one antler set were painted gold, and the antlers themselves on the other. The darker red Christmas hat got a gold trim and bobble (primarily to cover up a large smudge on the trim!) For the other red hat I tried to add a sheen of gold over the red. It didn’t work too well…

Finally I adhered the panel to my card base using some strong double sided tape. I then discovered that my most recent attempt to add gold to the lighter red hat hadn’t completely dried, and had created a large smudge of red into the white portion of the hat. Thankfully I was able to paint over it with white and, though I can still see it myself, husband wasn’t able to find the mistake so hopefully that means I did a good job of fixing it!

I love this card. It’s so fun and happy, and would definitely make a good card for any cat lover. It did take a little while to do all the painting, so it’s certainly not a quick card, but I had so much fun with it that I’d be happy to do it again. Preferably without the smudging though!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Addicted to Stamps and More – Anything Goes

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge Extra – Anything Christmas

Cupcake Inspirations – Watercolour (edit – where it was chosen as a sweet select!)

HLS Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas

HLS Watercolour Challenge – Anything Goes and Optional: Masking

Muse: ChristmasVisions – Inspiration Card (I took inspiration from the layout, the watercolouring, and the black sentiment in the centre) (edit – where it was chosen as a star!)

Chriss Blagrave’s Muse: ChristmasVisions inspiration card

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Emboss It

The Male Room – Masculine and Off The Edge

The Sisterhood of Crafters – Anything Goes