How To Make A Cat Toy

First Step:

Paint a mouse

Next:

Order fabric with mouse printed on it. 

Sew cat toy and fill with a mixture of polyfill and catnip.

Give to Gypsy for testing

Conclusion:

Need to use strong fabric for the back of the toy. 

Regular weight quilting cotton does NOT hold up to Gypsy's fangs and talons.

Wordless Wednesday

Grey and Orange

I was over at my parent's house last night, and her cats, Oliver and Bandit were snuggling together in the chair by the fireplace. I might have to paint this for her.

Bandit loves Oliver so much.

Chet & Petunia

Sometimes I'm a little ways into a portrait before I remember to take pictures. This was one of those times.

Maverick

Dog Show

So for Valentine’s Day the boyfriend and I watched *part* of the first day of the Westminster Dog Show. He had DVR’d it for me. I thought that was sweet. No matter what people’s opinions are on whether breeding dogs is evil, how can anyone who loves dogs not love watching dog shows? (I won’t get in to my opinion on breeding anything.)

I’ll just cover some thoughts/highlights from watching the show:

First of all.

Why do they fluff beagle’s tails now? They look like fox tails. Have they always done this and I just missed it?

 My boyfriend saw this dog and said “looks like a girl without any makeup on.” (As I was sitting next to him without any makeup on.)

They showed this dog getting ready for the show and he said “Oh gees, that dog has tampons all over its head!”

New breed highlights: I love Lundehunds  (even though I’ve never met one)

And this American English Coonhound was the most gorgeous dog in the whole show in my opinion.

That is all.

Happy =w= Day!

(And Valentine's day, too.)

My Day Job

My "real" job (the one that actually pays the bills) is drawing designs for an embroidery company (OESD). It's a lot of fun really, and it gets more and more fun as the market gets more trendy. I didn't even know home embroidery machines existed before I started working here, and now I really really really wish I had one. (Actually I did get a sewing machine for Christmas but it doesn't do embroidery.)
Here's one of my newest designs. It was actually based on customer requests. Who doesn't love the cute and cuddly honey badger? I'm happy with how it turned out so I just had to share:

I do end up drawing more flowers than anything else for embroidery, but I'm the designated animal-drawer here at work so I get assigned (most) of the collections that involve animals. 

Winter Cleaning

I've spent several hours this weekend trying to clean out the room in the house that I call my "art room". That was what I meant for the room when we moved in, at least. It reality it is "the room to put things that don't have better place to be put."
So I've done a lot of throwing things away. And a lot of organizing junk I want to keep into plastic drawer things from Walmart.
And a lot of sneezing. It was REALLY dusty in there.
Of course I found lots of stuff that was tempting to sit down and look through more thoroughly. Old photos and old cards and old sketchbooks. Photos got thrown in the new photo drawer, and most cards got thrown away (even though it always makes me feel bad to throw away cards.) And sketchbooks got pictures taken of them.
Then they got put in a drawer.