Cloisonne Cat 1

I first saw Michael Strong on the Carol Duvall show, many years ago.  He was showing off his Mosaid Frame stamp, and I fell in love with it right there, but had no idea where to buy one (this should give you an indication of how long ago this was!).  Anyway, some years later I discovered shopping on the internet, and did eventually remember to look for Michael's stamps online.  I found the mosaic frame, but forgot why I wanted it, and also an adorable cloisonne cat.  I was about to purchase the cat, when I saw that the shipping on the cat was as much as the stamp itself! (not that the shipping is unreasonable, but that Michael Strong stamps are very affordable).  Being a cheap person, I put off buying the stamp.

I will tell you that every December, Michael Strong has a free shipping special.  I thought about getting the cat then, but you know how it is during the holidays - you buy for other people, not yourself.  I still did not have any Michael strong stamps.

Then, at the recommendation of a friend, I bought this book Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists, and one of the first exercises is to draw lots and lots of cats.  After you do a bunch, you can select your favorite and use it as a digi; I did, and offered the image as a freebie to my readers.  The more I worked with the image, the more I liked it, and toyed with the thought of making it into a rubber stamp, which is not a cheap process.  However, there was a feeling in the back of my head that I had seen this image before.  It would be months before I thought about the cloisonne cat again, but you guessed it - they were (to me) very similar.  Frankly, even with shipping, buying the cloisonne cat was a lot cheaper than having mine custom made, so I now own the Michael Strong Cloisonne Cat.  I will be featuring cards made with this stamp this week.

Even though the stamp is a very clean graphic style, I couldn't resist combining it with Tim Holtz papers and techniques.  Burnishing the image really makes the white embossing pop.  I have to say that it has probably been years since I used any of my little vellum tags, but I always like the look when I do.  The ruffle is something I pleated myself from a scrap of gift tissue - I thought the card needed a pop of color.

Challenges:

• Paper Creators - pink
• Dream Valley - handmade flowers/embellishments
• Quick Quotes - Dimension
• Amusing Challenges - emboss resist(sentiment on the tag is from a•muse studio)
• A.R.T. card challenge - colors