Little Isis

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Hush. Don't tell Not the Mama. Although he'll see this soon enough.

What we know of Little Isis: She has VERY big eyes - the better to see dangly things hanging down, she's a kitten, she has one white hair on the top of her head and one on her neck but you have to look very closely, and she helps out Not the Mama at The Wren's Nest.

Like Spooker and the interlopers, she blogs at Purrchance to Dream.

And she makes a very good Halloween cat.

Raspberry Roads Designs' made me very happy by releasing not just one but TWO alphabet sets to go along with their Wild Kingdom collection, and, if this piece did not turn out exactly as I had envisioned it in my mind, it came very close.

It's designed to 8 x 10 landscape and yes, little Isis is a very beautiful little cat!

Huggy Bear

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I used to have a little black female cat named Eclipse who was a fluffy female House Panther. I had her for several years after I got out of high school, but when I decided to move to Florida, I felt it would be better to find her a new family than relocate her across country. So she went to a family that my mom worked with, and I understand was very happy there, having developed a strong attachment to their teen aged girl.

I have a thing for fluffy cats anyway, but black (or white) ones have a special place in my heart. So naturally, I'm extremely fond of Jeni and Dean's Huggy Bear who lives with Jasper McKitten Cat. The fact that he looks very huggily on top of being large and black and fluffy only makes matters worse.

Huggy Bear was part of a litter of four that was rescued in November of 2004. He went through several named - Bullet, Baby Bear - before they settled on Huggy Bear. He was put out for adoption like the rest of the siblings, but when he was not picked it become too much for Jasper's family and they brought him home from Pets, Inc.

Three and a half years later, he's turned into quite the fellow.

This I just the Jonathan freebie mini-kit from Flutter Expressions. The Flowers are from another freebie, the Country Chic kit from Five Corners of my Mind. I know that flowers aren't considered very masculine, but cats and flowers sort of go together, and I'm sure Huggy Bear would agree that flowers are in fact very Mancatly. The lettering is from Shabby Princess' Two Soon kit.

I had first done this piece and was unhappy with it:


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I had downloaded the Jonathan mini-kit from Flutter Expressions that I was going to do Huggy Bear with, but I couldn't find where the paper and elements had extracted to. So I ended up doing a miss-mash will elements from several diffent kits including Digital Freebies's Strong Shoes and the Country Chic kit from Five Corners of my Mind, but was unhappy with it.

The red lettering, like many of my Alphabets is from Free Digital Scrapbooking.

Both are done to 8 x 10 size for printing and framing.


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Huggy Bear was previously featured on House Panthers on March 6, 2008, so I'm not sure when I'm going to use either of these pieces on that forum.

Holiday Happiness

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I had no intention of doing a Christmas themed piece today, but Digi-Free pulled up a couple of Beachside themed kits and I thought I might be able to do something with the Catfish shots. That didn't really pan out - yet, but in looking for those shots I found the ones of Miss Diamond opening her presents and well, I had Shabby Princess' Holiday Magic Mini-kit on hand and one thing sort of lead to another.

Fast and easy.

Happy Easter

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The Hippy Hop kit by Karen Lewis has both Alphabets and word art included plus the cute little puffy bunny sticker. This made use of the word art, a very pensive look on Miss Diamond's face, and three shots of the Eastern Village that I bought this year at Walgreens.

I probably way over use this layout, but I almost always get a nice result out of it. This ended up looking pretty good, although the ribbon on the left is a little off from the picture. I really need to get a nice big monitor to work with. ::sigh::

The kit is for sale in the Digital Freebies boutique.

Nicky Nightime

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Nicky is one of the cats I've been trying to track down. His link on House Panthers says Kelly, but it leads nowhere. That would make sense, as they blog off blogger.

Nicky turned 7-years-old last October. He was adopted as a kitten and has lived with his family since. Upon moving in, he immediately tried to take over the household, but Kelly still refuses to bow down to him.

He is very protective of his family who writes that "People may associate with dogs the words 'loyal,' 'faithful,' and 'brave,' but these qualities also apply to our little black cat. He also plays fetch, he growls when the doorbell rings, and sometimes he even howls in the middle of the night for no apparent reason."

My mom says that cats are much more loyal, brave and faithful than dogs, but that they always get mislabeled as sneaky, cruel and aloof by people who do not understand them. Perhaps they need to hire better public relations people?

Sometimes called “El Gatito Perfecto”, this good cat blogs at It's all Good. He also does Midnight Monday on a regular basis, even if he never posts links for us.

As he's being featured on Easter Sunday, I at least wanted to go with a spring theme for him, so this is using Digital Freebies' Spring Fling kit (Melanie Ann Designs). The gel alphabets are a freebie from Free Digital Scrapbooking.

This was done to an 8 x 10 portrait format. I love the colors on it, but then, I'm partial to purple, black and blue.

Bunny Tasty?

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I started working on another page using the Hippy Hop kit, but my computer had issues and terminated the program. So...I went back to Bunny Tracks (see above) and made use of the bunny background because I'd had this moment of inspiration.

This is pretty much what Diamond would do if she ever saw a bunny, track it and try to eat it. So it sort of fits. In fact, any Bad Kitty Cat worth his or her weight in kitty litter should be out looking for that rabbit tonight.

I thought about entering in the Easter Contest at Pikapet, but the bunny lovers will take issue over it, I'm sure. It's fun and I rather like it. It's my favorite so far, and I'll likely print it to send to my mom. She gets a kick out of them, and no longer thinks I'm torturing the nice kitty cat by dressing her up because, well...she's so cute!

Egging you on

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My Funny Bunny by Danielle Engebretson Designs is available from Digital Freebies. I like the elements in this one, especially the eggs. I think an easter kit should have eggs in it. The silk flowers are also very nice.

And the look on Diamond's face in that top right hand shot is just precious.

The top two photos were taken with my Nikon. After I topped paying attention to her, she went behind her Easter Village and laid down and I couldn't resist, I snapped quite a few more shots with the digital, which is where the bottom one came from. She ended up falling asleep back there and she's back there now, actually.

The colors in the kit are great - very vivid. No alphabets, so I made do without.

Pretty Kitty

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This was the first of the Easter pages...I have quite a bit of material to work with since Miss Diamond was most co-operative about having her photo taken. This is with her pink "kitten" which is a Beanie Baby named Curtsy.

I was not all that happy with this one, that used the Bunny Tracks kit (Maria LaFrance) from Digital Freebies, one of three Easter kits I purchased last night. This goes with their freebie for the week, with is a quick page layout using this kit.

The chocolate lettering is a freebie from Free Digital Scrapbooking. I wasn't all the happy with the way it turned out. While I like the frame, it's just not working here. The set however, does have some fun stuff in it (like those glitter splats!)

Pretty Polar

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Despite the start of baseball, spring is not one of my favorite times of the year, so I guess I'm not quite ready for winter to be over.

These polar bears were shot in the summer in Buffalo, New York, at the zoo there.

I used elements from a variety of sources on this one. The snowflakes, lettering, and ribbons are all from Free Digital Scrapbooking, the background is from Shabby Princess' Moody Blues kit, while the white brads are from their Urban Kiwi kit. I think the blue brads came from one of Raspberry Road Designs' freebie kits - Bailly's Room, I think it was.

Harper Abigail Stephens

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While Abbie (Harper Abigail Stephens) is technically the House Panther in the Cats Stephens gang, but Emily and Eliot are good candidates for Blue Wednesday.

Abbie became a Stephens in March of 2007 and celebrated her first Gotcha Day at the beginning of the month. She was adopted for PetSmart, mainly as a companion for Eliot. Evidently Emily is not really friendly and Percy is a little on in years. She likes to bit feet, especially if she's being ignored, and she likes to start fights with Eliot, then act like he's hurting her. Unfortunately, just about everyone has caught onto this ploy.

She is long haired Panther with a very long body and tail that are both low to the ground giving her a kind of ferret look.

There have been a lot of changes recently in the Cats Stephens household and they do not blog as actively as they did, but you can find Abbie and Company at The Cats Stephens.

Please stop by and leave a note for Percy as well, who has non-metastasized nerve sheath sarcoma and will likely have to have surgery to remove a couple of toes. The are picking up a referral to take him to see a specialist at a hospital in Virginia .


Image by Zoolatry

Friday is also Freebie Friday and Abbie's page was created using the Red Velvet Mini Kit Freebie from Element by Design. I should note that it took forever to download, but the colors are fabulous. Alpha by Free Digital Scrapbooking.

The piece was designed to an 8 x 10 page, and should print and frame well. I just hung a couple of Miss Diamond in my office - ah, cute cat! Everyone around here just adores her.