Unrequited Love Cats – Mixed Media Valentine’s Card

Hi friends!

Today I have another Valentine card for you or is it?  I’m calling this one my “Unrequited Love Cats” card because these two cats are really not on the same page lol.  They are however on the same card so perhaps there’s hope!  Meet Lovesick Cat and Beloved Cat <3

Unrequited love or one-sided love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such by the beloved

Origin of the Idea

I knew I wanted to use these Snarky Cats as I just got the stamp set last week and was itching to use it on something.  I looked at these two in particular because of their facial expressions – the one on the right just looks lovesick and the one on the left looks so stunned, and that’s when the idea really started to develop.  Along with my Snarky Cat set I also go the Tiny Text stamp set and I used a stamp from that set for the Lovesick Cat’s statement of love, and I used a snarky sentiment from the Snarky Cats for the Beloved Cat – I mean just look at her face, of course that’s what she’s saying!

Process and How the card came together

First things first, I stamped out the cats and the sentiments I wanted to try. I forgot to take a photo of this step – oops!

Then I die cut the hearts from some old chipboard and heat embossed them with this glittery Red Glitz embossing powder by WOW.  I am not really that into red but this EP looks super cool and I love it!  I’ve actually used it in another project which you will see later this week.

Then I made a cup of tea and sat down and did all the colouring with Polychromos.  This is one of my favourite things to do and it’s so relaxing.  At this point, I wasn’t sure which colour combos to go with for the cats, so I did two – one for grey tabbies and one for orange tabbies, but you can see below that the red hearts look better with the grey kitties.

So I had the cats, the sentiments, and the hearts, and now what I needed was something to put them on and some plan for the arrangement.  You might remember these gel printed backgrounds I did last September during the Birgit Koopsen 30 Days of Gelli Printing Challenge.

These prints were all done on the first day, which was a “Colours of your Flag” prompt.  I made them all with various blues and this great stencil from TCW called Cosmic Swirls.  I have the 12 inch version – it’s awesome!  I decided to use one of the lighter blue backgrounds which I thought looked really good with the red hearts and the grey cats.  I cut one down to 8.25 x 5.25 inches to fit on one of my large cards.  Then I started to play around with the arrangement…

My thought process goes like this – I need a frame, a kitty in a frame, lovesick cat looking at kitty in frame… but the frame isn’t right, move on…

Next, a baseboard frame, landscape view, landscape is good, frame is too big, and I need gold! … moving on…

door number three… hmm where did this come from, I like it, but I still need a frame!

Interlude the 1st

So yes, where did this heart background come from?  Well it was intended for another card!  While I was colouring in the kitties, I also decided to play around with colouring this piece of embossed card that I was planning to use on a second card that I was working on at the same time.

I used this great 3D Hearts textured impressions folder from Sizzix and it was going to be used on a second card but it erm… wound up on this one. I had started off colouring on a bit of scrap card and liked how it looked so I decided to colour in all the debossed hearts.  I thought it needed something extra though so I added Glossy Accents to them all and then had to leave it to dry overnight.  That was not part of the plan and so I ended up having to finish the card the next morning, when I had intended to finish both cards that night! Ah well, you have to go where the muse takes you, right?

Next it was time to do more work to the background. Just a reminder that this was acrylic paint through a stencil, printed on a gel plate.  I love the blue and white and the swirls but I thought it could use some paint splatters, so I added some in gold and black.  At the same time I also added some black splatters to the oval frame that I had cut out using Tim Holtz Stitched Ovals, and painted with the same gold, but I forgot to snap that one.

Interlude the 2nd

So I had to leave the background and the painted frame to dry for a little while, so I started watching this cat movie on Netflix called #cats_the_mewvie or something like that and look what happened…

Lily cat has a front row seat to watch other cats be famous on the internet lol.  Lily on the right, internet cats on the laptop, evidence of fussy cutting on the left!  I’m pretty sure they watch Netflix when we are out, there are always paw prints on the screen because she is used to the tablet which is a touch screen and the laptop is not, which is confusing when you are a techno-cat.

Anyway, interlude over, back to the card…

Kitties Assemble!

All that needed to be done now was assemble the components, and remember to cut around Lovesick cat’s paws so he could hold the heart! Here are some close ups of the finished card.

Beloved cat

Lovesick cat holding his heart

Lovesick cat

And that is the finished card!

Hope you like it and the little process post complete with real cat interlude!

Till next time!

CHALLENGES

I am entering this card in the following challenges:

Country View Challenges – Splatters, Splashes and Drips
The Artistic Stamper February Creative Challenge: Words – the words on this card are so important aren’t they as they convey two very different opinions lol, although Beloved Cat’s face is also worth a thousand words!
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – With Love
Craft Stamper Magazine – Take It Make It February AG
Funkie Junkie – Love Is All Around Us
Mix It Up – AG + Stencilling – used the optional twist of stenciling on the background – TCW Cosmic Swirls stencil on gel plate
Wow Embossing Powder February Challenge – Embossing Glitters / Glintz held on Facebook

PROJECT RECIPE:

Tim Holtz Stitched Ovals Thinlits dies, Snarky Cats stamps, Tiny Text stamps, Heartfelt Bigz die, Glossy Accents, Distress Archival Black Soot,
Sizzix – 3D Textured Impressions – Hearts by Courtney Chilson
Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencils
Wow Embossing ink and embossing powder – Red Glitz
Finnabair – Unicorn Hair Metallique Sparks, Black liquid acrylics
Gina K cardstock – Black Onyx (for card base), Lovely Lavender (scrap)
Finnabair metallic and liquid acrylic paint
Nuvo Deluxe adhesive
From stash: gel printed background, chipboard scraps for hearts