The Bread's Meow

One day at Panera in Plymouth, while getting coffee, we saw some art done by children displayed on the wall.  Zarah commented on how she loved the painting of the cat made of bread - called The Bread's Meow ~ I took a picture of it, made a similar cat in Illustrator, sketched it onto an Ampersand Aquabord, where I used watercolors and watercolor pencils, shaded with pastels, then sealed it with Krylon UV Resistant spray sealer.  

The Original from Panera

Illustrator drawing from the original above

The finished gift to Zarah - my version of the original

Happy Birthday Tracy!!!

I went to Urban Outfitters and saw a really cool squirrel pillow that reminded me of Tracy - but it was like $30 and sooooo easy to make ~ so goes the idea for this project.  

I sketched a squirrel on paper, increased it's size at 5% intervals to see how big I wanted the final size to be - only because I can't sketch big  >_>    Once I decided on the size, I used my window as a "light table" to sketch the outline on the material.

Time to paint the squirrel - I used a bent paperclip as the "paint brush", dipping the small edge into the paint in a crosshatching design ~

After the body of the squirrel was done, using all 3 of the colors and spraying the edges with the diluted green ink, I felted an acorn in his little hands ~

The pre-sewn finished project - I need to do the back, sew it together, stuff it, and then it will be done!!!  Zarah said she wants me to make her some pillows for her apartment ~ WOOT!!!  The insert picture is the picture of the original pillow from Urban Outfitters ~

I finally gave it to her on October 15th - not too far from her actual birthday on September 3rd - certainly not a record for me!!!

Raison d'etre

This blog is to chronicle the steps of each project I do ~ starting with the birthday squirrel for Tracy - I did this mostly because once I decide on an idea for someone, it takes me a while to get it to the giving stage - definitely well past the time the gift was due if it were to be on time.

The first project I thought of doing this with is the card I made for Nana -