Decopatch Cat

Inspired recently by Andrea Farmer's up cycled bird ornament on her blog post (Decoupage bird), I thought I'd do the same thing with a "joke" Christmas gift I received. My step-daughter and I have a long tradition of buying each other tacky or cheap items that are sometimes also useful, but will always make us laugh. This year I got two items. One was a glitzy gold evening bag, which I was challenged to use in a play. Fortunately, that was easy and I wore it on stage last week in our latest production at Bilton - much to Gill's delight! The second gift was a white plastic cat pencil sharpener- with "litter tray" (as yet untouched by decopatch) to catch the pencil sharpenings. The pencil goes into the cat's bum, and as it does so, a miaow is heard! Tacky, but true. I've since decorated it with decopatch paper in an animal print design, here's how it looks now (sorry but I can't seem to get decent shots of it with it being so glossy) and during the decopatch process:

I think it's a vast improvement and I've made more use of a tacky ornament/pencil sharpener/toy! Thanks for the inspiration, Andrea!

AndreaFarmerArt: It's back!

AndreaFarmerArt: It's back!: Just when we thought it was gone for good, the Community Pop-Up Arts & Crafts Shop returns to its original venue. Situated again in the old ...

Latest creation

Just thought I'd share my latest creation with you - it was a personal creation for my sister and she has kindly said I could post images of it on here. As it was her 40th birthday last week, and she is the "baby" of the family, I wanted to giver her a gift that was unique to her, memorable and that she would hopefully treasure for the rest of her life. I decided to create a "Memory Box" - so (in the space of a couple of weeks, as I only hit upon this idea on 31st December) I contacted as many of her friends and family as I possibly could without her knowledge. I told them what I was doing (painting the box in one of Rachel's favourite colours) and asked for contributions from them of their favourite or earliest memories of Rachel. I was pleasantly surprised and touched by the amount of replies I received. The box I bought was much larger than any I've decorated before, so I was hoping for a lot of replies in order to make it look reasonably full! Thankfully, it did - with photos, letters, cards, poems, newsletters and memorabilia galore - even a tee-shirt from Australia arrived in time. I wrote on the inside of the box with names of places that Rachel has lived, liked or worked at over the years, and she has told me that it's brought back a lot of happy memories for her already, especially all the funny tales that her friends have recounted for her.

I may even use this idea as a selling point for large boxes in the future, who knows? They would obviously have to be made to order, but it might be a good way of giving a personalised and unique gift to someone.

I bought the box from aspire 2702 on ebay, and it is a really well made sturdy pine box with carrying holes at each end. I would definitely use this seller again and there are so many boxes to choose from!

I lined the inside of the box at the bottom with funky foam and the base of the box itself with cork.

Here are a few photographs of the finished box:

3 Wise Men And An Interloper

It's been a month since I last posted on my blog. I find that this time of year is always a hard one for keeping up to date with blogs because there is a lot of pressure at the build-up to Christmas, especially with concerts and end of year awards evenings (which I am involved with due to my membership of both Hull Musical Society and Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society). Then there's Christmas itself - family time. Once Christmas is over, we start working on the final preparations for the January production at Bilton. This includes building the set, organising props, costumes, drinks, newsletters, posters, publicity, decorating the set, etc etc - apart from trying to organise enough rehearsals to get the play up to scratch in time. This year, we've also had my sister's 40th birthday to think about - I made her a large wooden "Memory Box", and secretly contacted as many of her friends and family as I could to ask them to contribute to this gift by sending me messages and/or old photos of her to put inside it. I'm happy to say that the box was quite full when I handed it over to her on Wednesday this week!

Anyway, the title of this post is the reason I've finally managed to write something on  my blog again - I was contacted a week or so before Christmas by the internet marketing coach for "The Vibrant Coach" website and blog - they wanted permission to use one of my paintings (3 Wise Men And An Interloper) as a header image for a blog post. I am happy to say they used it on their blog post issued on Christmas Day, Wisdom Is The Greatest Gift. If you click on the link, the blog post will open in a new window.  Thanks to Lisa Barnett for writing to me and using my image with a link to the Rogue Gene Gallery web-site where the painting is for sale.