No Mummies Needed....or monies either!

Miss Diamond, using scraps you can get FREE on the W4E I want my Mummy Blog Train. (Well, except for the alpha, but you can earn that for free by taking the Learning Challenge on the W4E forums.)

I used a little bit from each kit in making up this layout!

You can grab my part by scrolling down on this blog a bit, and you can find the rest of the stops on the train HERE.

Springpunk!

Some springpunk goodness. Diamond and Tristan using my Rusted Flowers taggers kit.

Got this from House Panthers!

Remember to Appreciate your favorite black cat!

New Year Blues Tutorial

A new using the Tilly's New Year taggers kit by by Puddicat Creations. I just love, love, love the colors in this kit!

You can try this tutorial for yourself at Di Before Dawn tutorials.



BTW Cindy: Tristan really liked the top hat and is wearing it tonight when he escorts his girlfriend cat T'Abby Normal to the big bash the Man Cat's Club.

I told him I didn't think you would mind.

Purr Prints Freebie

A little something for the cat lovers - my Miss Diamond is a mighty huntress and a lethal predator who has killed many, many rats, birds and other assorted critters in her career. She's also one of the biggest little divas on the face of the planet.

Whether you have a pampered house puss or lean, mean, killing machine, you'll find something to enjoy in Purr Prints.

This one is great for kids, because as you know - cats hate getting dressed up. Well, most do. So with this, you can dress them up online and not have to worry about the claws.

Note: this kit is Personal Use ONLY - No S4H/S4O with this kit, sorry!

Please remember that by downloading this kit you agree to my terms of use which state, in part that that that you cannot redistribute, rebroadcast, resale, or claim my graphics as your own. That means placing this kit on 4Shared, RapidShare or any other file sharing site for any reason is a strict NO-NO! That constitutes redistribution.

If you know someone who is interested in this kit , please direct them to my blog where they can download their own copy. Free to use is NOT the same thing as free to share. My graphics are copyright protected.

Plus I already pay for premium download service so you don't have to wait for your freebies, and the links stay here FOREVER, so you don't have to put this kit anywhere else to share it, just link to this post.

To download from MediaFire, click HERE.
The password is "Meow!" - no quotes.

If you enjoyed this freebie, please take a moment to vote for Digi!


Click on the blinkie to vote!

Remember that you can keep up with all the latest Digicats news and freebies just by liking us on Facebook, or following us on Twitter!

Decisions, decisions

Diamond excels at being very mean to Tristan. One of her campaigns, aside from trying to starve him out, is to make him feel unwelcome everywhere in the house. If she catches him sleeping somewhere, she will immediately claim it for herself and kick Tris out, even if she's never evidenced any interest in the area before.

For example, the chair in the bedroom. Tris seems to like sleeping with the floofyheads, but since she's discovered him pulling his E.T. stunt, she goes after him if she catches him on the chair.

He'd taken over "my" spot on the bed, but unfortunately, I need it from time to time, so to give him an alternate place to sleep, I put a box down in the living room. He likes boxes.

But this has now created a terrible conflict for poor Tristan. Because he doesn't know if he should "go outside" or "sit in box". Or "eat" or "sit in box".

And to make sure that Diamond stay off his case, I put TWO boxes down and since she can't sit in both them at the same time, one is always available to Tristan. (She's tried scent marking both, Tris is ingoring this subtle little hint.)

The two boxes however are really creating a delima because he absolutely cannot decide if the should "sit in box" or "sit in box".

If only all of our decisions in life were so hard.

Cat O' Mine Tails

So, we're sitting in the house together, the Big Black Christmas Cat and I, on Chrismtas Night at around 3 AM in the morning, and we start hearing this "snapping" noise coming from the corner by the door.

Diamond is staring intently at the area and I'm thinking to myself, "Oh no. Don't tell me Tristan brought something exotic into the house again." Diamond continues to stare, like there's some sort of prey animal there and then all the sudden...

that's when....

the bookcase collapsed.

The snapping noise was the wood giving way.

Diamond simply looks at me with the attitude of "See. I've you'd listened to me and bought cat treats instead of books, you wouldn't have this problem."

---

Sunday, I had just gotten out of the shower when the smoke alarm starts going off. There's no smoke, and no one was cooking anything, so I figured the battery was going.

I dry myself off and go out into the living room to see what's going on.

Tristan is sitting under the smoke alarm, staring at it with rapt attention.

"MEEP!" says the smoke alarm.

"Meow?" Tristan responds.

"MEEP!" says the smoke alarm.

"Meow?" Tristan responds.

"You're talking to the smoke alarm," I observe.

"MEEP!" says the smoke alarm.

"Meow?" Tristan responds.

"What did you do to it?"

"MEEP!" says the smoke alarm.

"Meow?" Tristan responds.

I pull the smoke alarm down and take the battery out. Tristan looks crushed, like I'd just banished his best friend in the whole wide world.

---

Last night, right after dinner, Diamond vanished toward the bedroom and wasn't seen again for the remainder of the evening. It was finally time to go to sleep when I went to look for her.

She was in none of her usual spots, but when I found my black jeans laying on the floor, I had a pretty good idea of where she'd gotten off to.



She's been up there before, it's just been a while. Trying to get her down, without her taking half the closet with her, was an entirely different matter.

Fractured Carols

Do you see what I see?
(Do you see what I see?)
A tabby, a tabby, shivered in the cold,
Now he's curled up on my fleecy all bold,
Now he's curled up on my fleecy all bold.



So, Rowena has left for South Carolina. She was reading me the weather report and I said "It sounds like snow weather. You might have a white Christmas." Started dancing around all happy. She's never seen snow, it's one of those things she keeps wishing for.

Frankly I've shoveled enough snow in my life, so I'll stay in beautiful green Cape Coral. Although it's dropped into the 50's and the birds are flying around trying to stay warm.



This is a tutorial I wrote last night. It's very easy as the frame comes done for you, so there's only a few things to do, nothing too hard and nothing I don't explain. This is a good one of the beginning tagger.

You can find it at Di Before Dawn tutorials.

We're in the office for half a day today. Then I get to go home and fight for possession of the bed. Again.

Winter Solstice

I FINALLY finished my portion of the Scrapper's Secret Grand Opening Collab. This is a part of the collab you'll be able to get your hot little hands on starting November 27th:



My computer absolutely did not want to cooperate with me on this one. LOL.

I hope you like it. It should give you something to look forward to! :)



My cat, Miss Diamond, has a very soft meow, but for some reason, I can always hear her. I can be in the bedroom with the door closed and the air conditioner running and still hear her meow when she wants to come in. And it's more like "Mau", but...

I'm told cat's have superior hearing to ours and superior sense of smell as well. I had gotten up late last night to take some pain meds, and finish up the paperwork on the Winter Solstice kit and heard her ask to come in. As soon as I got up and walked to the door, Tristan, my tabby, goes romping past, chatting up a storm...

"Oh! I need to go out! I need to check the storm drain! I need to go check the canal! I need to go..."

I knew Miss Diamond was on the other side of that door and when I opened it, Tris as going to be in her face and she would not like that and I told him but he was so busy rambling on he wouldn't listen.

The look of surprise on his face when I opened the door and he saw the Demon Cat in front of him was priceless. I scooted him off to the left hand side of the door, but she still manage to get a claw or two into him.

They do love each other, she just doesn't like him getting in her face.

On a side note I was totally disgusted by the story of Sticky the Cat, who was found, wrapped from tail to neck in duct tape in a yard in Pennsylvania. Miss Diamond reports over at Diamond's Lair. Really makes me wish I could divorce myself from the human race.

Weekend Cat Blogging #231

Let's Rock!



Well, delicious, delicious! Katie starts out our weekend cat blogging round up with some delicious chili! Yum! Yum! I hope she saved some for me!

Check it out at Glogirly & Katie.



Next Gattina and crew stop by to admire my box-bed. It seems there's something missing over at My Cats and Funny Stories.

The Demon Cat has been outside all day, but Luna stopped by to keep me company. She is at home in the studio, and I don't think she ever goes out.

No munchies, but some beautiful sweet kitty faces over at Paulchen's Food Blog.

Over at Sidewalk Shoes, Patchouli has a choice for you to make. I didn't feel it was much of a choice!



Over at Judi's Mind Over Matter, Jules, another House Panther, poses for the camera.

Perhaps they are having too much good food, but Kaz's Cats are regurgitating. They sent me a post on Three New Things from February of 2008? I think they are three old things now - sort of like the massage therapist is an old thing.

Rosa's Yummy Yums presents us with some yummy tabby pictures! Tabbies are always yummy!



So are tabby toes!

That's it for this round up! Need more cats? The Cat Boys are hosting This week's Bad Kitty Cats festival of chaos, while, Nikita has the big wheel spinning with the Carnival of Cats.

Weekend Cat Blogging #231

Oh Hai! Sir Tristan Tabby Cat Longtail here! As you can see, I have finally found a box that fits my mancatly physic. As a mancat, I have found that it is important to have a box big enough to accommodate your mancatliness. Plus it really impresses the lady cats!

The Demon Cat and I are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging this weekend here at Digicats. Got a cat related post? Leave a comment below with a link to be included in our Sunday Round Up!

My friend, and fellow Floridian, Ms. Ginger is an avid scrapbooker. She is also an innercity Kindergarten teacher. Every year she tries to get 100 post cards for her class by the 100th day of school.

If you could help, and send her a postcard from where ever you are in the world, it would be greatly appreciated. The kids love getting these cards, especially from distant places like England, Germany and Austrialia that they'll probably never get to see in their lifetime.

The address to send your cards to is:

Ms. Brown's Class
Greynolds Park Elementary
1536 N.E. 179th Street
North Miami Beach, FL 33162

You can visit Ms. Ginger on the web at: http://gingershouse.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for helping out!

Bungle in the Jungle

I was hoping to finish up my contribution to Julie's blog train yesterday. The train theme is "Back to Nature" and my particular portion is a bit of a bungle in the jungle. Unfortunately I've also gotten hooked on Jules' scripts so this has taken me a bit longer than I like. So I'm not quite done.

However, around 6:30 my back was hurting enough that I had to go lay down for awhile, and as I turned around, what to my wondering eyes should appear:



Diamond has just been awful to Tristan for the last 3 weeks or so, mostly because of the upheaval in the household from the new fridge. Diamond was sure, because we were moving everything around that we were moving and it was all Tristan's fault, so she's been on his case every five minutes. It seems however they finally kissed and made up.

Well...this is as much kissing and making up as they are like to do.



And doesn't Tris look comfy?

The scraps are from the Jungle kit I'm working on. The blog train leaves the station on Tuesday, September 1st, and you'll be able to snag this on for free!

Paw-sitively Feline

Eat, sleep, scrap.

Eat, sleep, scrap.

What a dull kitten I have become.

And there's never enough time for sleeping, which makes me think I should cut out the eating part. Woman can live on sleep and scrap alone, right?

I went to bed early - it was hot - and got for a while in the middle of the night after it had cooled down. I let Tristan out, but my appearance caught Diamond in the middle of grooming and this threw her into a quandary. Groom? or Outside? Outside? or Groom? Grooming is important as she must look good for her furriends. But she need to go outside to check on her territories and to keep an eye on Tristan. Groom? Or Outside? Decisions, decisions.

In a moment of suddenly clarity, she sorted out her priorities. TREATS! Then outside. She, of course, slept all day so she could cat around all night.

I got new clip art, so I felt I should try to put a kit together before the rest of the clip art resellers got their paws on it and and resold it to every other designer out there. It's coming along nicely, but I'm trying to track down a template I saw a couple of days ago...I hate when that happens.

Anyway, here are some tags from my newly released Purr Prints. They turned out incredibly cute!





The clip art cat was white and so I stuck with white cats through out That was also the reason I went with Outlaw's Cookie posers, they were - if not quite white - at least lightly colored. They Meows I have from Lisa for example, are black and I didn't feel that would work as good.

My first ever cat was a white domestic long hair named Puffy. My Great Grandmother got her for me when I was four. I got to name her and my sister, and to this day my sister resents the name I gave her - Carol - and insists she would have preferred being called Puffy.

Not that I believe her.

I do not remember if Puffy would let me dress her up. Diamond will play dress up with me, but she really does prefer that I dress her up on the computer, and not in real life. LOL!





This tag largely used the clip art that is included in the kit. The hat on Princess is the only one that is attached, all the rest can be swapped out from cat to cat or to the posers. I suppose you could cover the hat on Princess with one of the others, if you really wanted to.





I figured the pre-teen crowd would really get a kick out of this kit, given the pink colors, the pet theme and the Diva sort of attitude. It's fairly easy to use as well, so you can get some great looking tags with a minimum amount of fuss and bother.

Although honestly, there are some teens out there that are probably a better graphical artist than I am.





Precious is quite dressed up in this tag. I rather got a kick out of doing that. The other two white cats didn't get names, but I suppose I should have called them Powder and Puff and stuck with the "P" theme. Oh well. You can name them yourselves if you like,

I did the word art myself (again) and there is a Paw Print alpha included, a sample of which you can see on the first tag.

20 Papers and 101 elements for $2.50 is a great price - you'd pay as much just for the three posers! And there's quite a few goodies stuck in there, like the boom box and a diary, so you don't have to use the kitty elements if you don't want. You are kind of stuck with the paw prints on the papers though.

Here is the preview of the kit:




All there of the posers that I used in the tags are included in the kit, so you should have a pretty good idea of what's available.

I have to do my shameless self promotion, but I do have to say I really enjoyed playing with the kit - probably as much as I enjoyed putting it together!

Note: this kit is no longer available for sale. You can download a free copy of it HERE.

Cats on Tuesday - Van Meowlin

Saturday was "Bike Night" in the Cape, a monthly festivity started by the Chamber of Commerce. Perhaps because it was a holiday weekend, this one was bigger than usual and was not limited to 47th Terrace as is usually the case. There was a stage set up and live music starting from around 2:00 pm in the afternoon.

It might have been at Eddie Fishbowl's, I'm not sure. With the water, the sound sort of bounces around, making it hard to locate in which direction it's coming from.

In an case, around 8 PM the "Headline" band took the stage. The amps were cranked up and they lead off with a Sublime number that I could hear quite clearly at the house. I should note that the headliner is still a local band, just like all the rest of the acts, just a little bit better. Yes, Sully from Godsmack might live in the Cape, but we don't get treated to free Godsmack concerts - darn it all anyway.



Out in the backyard, Tristan, my little Rock Star took center stage as well, jumping up on the table on the patio and meowling along with the band. Granted, it wasn't in tune, but I think they hear things we don't and react to them in different ways.

With the weather turning nicer both Tristan and Diamond have been outside nearly constantly, making me feel unloved some days. Tris did come and curl up in my lap the other day for some lovin' and Diamonds always up for a good scritch when I settle down to read, which I did last night, finishing off the romance I'd been enjoying.



This is Tris demanding to be let out. He'd come in to eat, but the minute I turned out the camera, he bolted for the door and demanded egress. He doesn't like the flashy box and is becoming quite camera shy.



Notice how dirty his paws are?

I have no idea when Tris' big premier on American Idol is going to happen, but I do have to say, we're all hopeful that he'll soon have the recording contract he dreams of.

---

I've been slogging along, trying to put together a Cinco de Mayo kit and feeling largely uninspired about it. Saturday night though, I had sat down to do some tags I'd been thinking about, and then changed my concept and started creating a new kit along the same lines.

I currently have 16 papers and 112 elements, and while I'd like to believe I'm done, it occurred to me this morning I hadn't decorated the frames, nor had I enclosed any wraps so people using the kit could decorate them themselves. So...they'll be more elements forthcoming and I should probably add some more papers as well, just to balance things out.

The theme has to do with kissing a lot of frogs in an attempt to find your Prince Charming and inspired in part by some of Ms. Ginger's word art, which I also am using in the kit (with her permission, of course).

I was trying to explain this to Rowena, but finally decided to put together a tag to show her a little of what I'm trying to do...



"Toad U So" will be part of the May Goodie Train, so look for my "mega kit" to be available around the beginning of next month.

Meanwhile, yes, I'm going back to work on the Cinco de Mayo kit as well, and I have some ideas for both dog and kitty cat themed kits.

Cats on Tuesday

Diamond's latest idea for getting rid of unwanted tabby brofurs is to starve him out. That being said, when she's in the house, she stakes out the food dish and won't let him have any. Saturday she came into the house and brutally shoved him away from his food dish while he was eating.

Sunday, after having eaten all her food, she was waiting for me to put Tris's down so she could eat it too. No matter that it would make her sick, it would prevent him from getting any. Ah, but I cleverly put her out in the back yard and fed Tris when she wasn't in the house.



Wherein lies the flaw in her plan. She is acclimated to my schedule and tends to sleep at night and go out during the day. Tristan is still on a night day schedule and goes out most of the night, so he has the house - and the food dish - to himself during the day.

Of course, we still have the problem in which Tris and Diamond will still only eat at the one feeding station...the food just doesn't taste as good if I move it elsewhere.



Except for treats. Party Mix is good to eat anywhere. I knew that 80s anthology was good for something besides big hair!

---

Rachel from Captivated Visions had mentioned her new "Wild Thing" kit complements the "Fierce Feline" poser pack by Deanna's Dreams quite well. It does, and the pair released an alpha to go with it.

The main problem I have is with the Fierce Feline posers. Some - most - are okay. But all cats, when they walk, lift their feet on the same side of their bodies at the same time. The are one of only three animal species on the planet that naturally walk this way. Horses can be taught to do it - i.e. "pacing" in harness racing - but it's not a natural gait to them.

You can find an example of this HERE. Deanna was unaware of this, and has them "trotting" - lifting their limbs on alternate side of their bodies, much like a horse. And while animal poser tend to look exceptionally fake to start with, these end up looking unnaturally fake.

I have minimized her mistake as best I could in these tags.



Furry does not translate well in poser. I have some "furry cats" that someone took many hours to fur, but even they look odd. Then again, most poser people tend to look kind of dollish, so...



There's a lot of greenery in the kit, but I've not seen any of the "wild" kits take advantage of the theme to enclose some really exotic flowers. Rachel brings her own form of urban grunge into the jungle as well, with the rusty iron fencing.

But I dislike caging my cats.



She forgot the "tuft" on the end of the lion's tail as well, so took pains to cover it up. I mean, granted, she's a poser artist, not a wildlife expert, but don't most kids learn early on that lions have tufts on the end of their tails?

While I did drop her a line about the gait, I didn't say anything about her tails because I didn't want to sound too critical. I think that may be the problem with poser. It lets you create art work without first studying your subject. And any good artist should first become familiar with their subject.



You can see where she has the gait wrong in this one. It seems more like she was looking at dogs for poses than at cats. Dunno, maybe she's a dog person. I otherwise like her graphics, I just think she missed a bit on the fierce feline pack.

I do have an idea to do a "tabby cat kit" but I also want to capture the "tiger in my tabby" and add a wild element too kit. Going through the existing wild themed kits has been instructional in terms of what I'd like to include.

Those butterflies are beautiful BTW!



I am very fond of white tigers so I had to include this one. The Miami Metro zoo keep White Bengal Tigers and it's amazing to watch both them, and their orange coated brethren, in their exhibit. The are so like house cats and then, so unlike them at the same time.

The flower in this tag and in the third tag came from the Blooming Grabbags 1 & 2 by Chili Designz. Definitely need more exotic flowers.

Chili

I dug out Miss Diamond's Easter Village this weekend to take into work today. She was a little miffed that I was taking her "Eastern Village" to my "Day Hunting Place" but I'm afraid that If I set it up at home, Tristan would break it.









These are really cute pieces that I should really photograph - sans the easter grass - and tube so the rest of you can use them in your projects.

The Hippity Hop train is off although there are quite a bit of contributions which are not posted yet. Either that or the designers all jumped the track. I'm also ready for Wednesday's Goodie Train. If you check The Good Train Blog, you can see the kit previews from the designers that are in the train - mine included.

One of the other designers is Chili Designz, who I equate to great CU items. I just realized this weekend she does some really good scraps as well.

The following two tags were done using her contribution to the Spring Time blog Train, which you can download from her blog. The bunnies are from Outlaw by Design.





It's very much a mini-kit, but some of the items are really unique.

She also has a kit in the Groovylicious Syncho-Scrap at Exquisite Scraps:



The poser is one of KairinaKat Kreations and is included with the kit. I think they were all scrambling for Hippy posers...LOL!

The word art in the background is from Bits'N'Bobs contribution to the Groovylicious Syncho-Scrap.



I don't think any of the elements in the kit were very 60-ish, but they were quite unique and I managed this rather surrealistic piece, which I'm rather fond of.

The Hippy poser is (b) by Lacy Clagg. I was not hurting for hippies, as I have Lacy's Hippy 1 and Hippy 2 packages.

Now I'm going to have to look more seriously at Chili Designz kits as the little tastes I've gotten from her freebies have made me very curious.

Meanwhile, I looking at the DigiFree FAQs and noticed this line: "taggers at 72dpi are not really for proper digital scrapbooking..." Excuse me? Taggers are people too! Maybe we need a tagger free search engine?