Cats on a rainy afternoon

It's a rainy day here and our cats are not pleased. They are indoor pets but they also have a kitty pen where they like to cat around for an hour or two each day. Not so fun when everything out there is. . .well. . .wet! They are making the best of it by lounging on a little rug in the kitchen, keeping tabs on the wildlife through the sliding doors, and waiting for the other half of their owner team to come home.

I made the rug out of scrap yarn crocheted around a clothesline for body. It has been in front of our kitchen sink for almost 20 whole years and hasn't worn out yet!

The orange and white cat is Kitty Boy. The calico is Breezy, named for her blithe and airy personality.

David, my hubby and the cats' other keeper, is off at the Dayton OH Hamvention for the day. Since he's retired and mostly enjoys doing things around the house he's not that often away by himself so it feels like a different kind of Saturday to us all. I've done a few chores, then had fun catching up on some reading but now it's time to think about dinner. Beef & noodles sound good for a day like today. We've had the coolest May here in western Ohio!

How about you? Are you having a lazy Saturday or are you "getting things done"?
Everybody needs a day off now and then, so I wish that for each of you!

An easy all-purpose card

Another quickie, this card on kraft cardstock features a sand castle image from
october pumpkin ,colored with pencils, edge torn and inked, then affixed to a blue paper panel on a dark brown cardstock panel. There are two wooden buttons on the card, probably discovered while sifting through the sand on the beach, don't you think?

I have to brag for a moment about the quality of october pumpkin rubber stamps. They are not made in vast quantities overseas, but carefully handcrafted in the USA by a wonderful stamp company called Picture My Stamps. They use the best production methods, take their time to do things right, and turn out great stamps that seem to improve with age. Everyone who has used them seems to have very good things to say about the results they get. My daughter Stephanie and I are proud of the quality of stamps made for october pumpkin.

More polka dots, tag, and ribbon

This was a very quick card to make for a friend who is currently under the weather. It's just a brown foldover card with a panel of pink, then a brown polka dot paper panel topped by a readymade tag with a ribbon added and two october pumpkin seashells colored with pencil and contour cut, then adhered with glue dots. The sentiment is from Inkadinkado.

Recurrent themes

I've never made a grey card, since grey isn't one of my favorite colors, but happened to have a couple of grey readymade foldovers and decided to challenge myself. I couldn't just throw them away, you know!

By now it's clear that my favorite topic is sea-related, so I chose seashell stamps from october pumpkin for all of today's projects. This was to discover how many different ideas I could come up with while using the same stamps in basically the same way. I stamped the envelope too, just for fun.

As I worked with the cards it became clear to me that I have some favorite construction themes that I use over and over in my cardmaking! Do you do this too? My faves seem to be
tags, polka dots, and ribbon. Maybe it's a phase I'm going through - who knows!

The shades of green coordinate in reality, but in scanning they somehow didn't come out true and the shades clash. A little frustrating! You'll have to take my word for it that it looks better in person!

Still kinda chilly in Ohio so today was a good day to spend some relaxing time at the craft table.
I hope you were able to find some time to play too, wherever you live!