SilhouetteCat and the mermaid

No, they are not a couple even if the title makes it sound like that ;-) Although you never know if they have met under a full moon, SilhouetteCat sitting at the pier maybe, looking down on his friend who has come from the depth of the ocean to say hello? I wonder what kind of conversation they would have.

Let's start with SilhouetteCat.
If you have followed me for a while, you may know that he is one of my favorite HeatherCats and I have made several versions of him.
This one is my second bead embroidered version and the first one in color, all because I couldn't resist turning a shimmering checkerboard cab into a moon.
I hadn't planned a HeatherCat. My first thought had been a tree "holding" the full moon, but luckily I used a big piece of backing as if Mabel, my muse, had been whispering in my ear that a moon needs a cat ...
Once I had beaded the bezel for the moon and added some rows around it, I knew that it reminded me of Heather's SilhouetteCat.

So I added the black cat -  with the body changed a little because I didn't want him to reach up to the moon.
Now some stars. In bead looming, my night skies often have dots for the stars, but this moon was so big that I felt they needed to be bigger, too. I didn't have any cabs that would have worked, though, so I went with more circles (that's probably why people are reminded of Van Gogh's "Starry Night", but if you have a closer look, you see it's not really that similar and it was not my inspiration).
It was also fun to add the fringe. I still have tons of those dagger beads from when an old project fell through, and the color was perfect.

Then I was at the usual point, what kind of rope to use. Of course I thought of my beloved Herringbone, but neither the 4 bead nor the 6 bead rope appealed to me this time because the different blue tones had different sizes.
I remembered, though, that I had just got some faux suede ribbon and there were still a bunch of crimps from my early bead looming days, and indeed the braids looked much better.
Now I'm really happy how the whole piece turned out!

And the braids actually brought me to a WIP that has spent nine months in my infamous WIP drawer - my mermaid.
I hadn't even posted about her here because I thought she would be done much earlier, but I had had the same problem with the rope. Bead loomed strips didn't sit right, the Herringbone ropes didn't look right.

Luckily the other spools of faux suede that I got were a dark teal and a light blue which went perfectly with the colors I used in the mermaid's tail.
Actually, the first idea had been to make just a fish tail with all those sequins, but a tail by itself always looks so cut off, so instead this large mermaid started evolving, getting more and more hair and this big fish tail. It was fun ;-)

It's amazing how satisfying it is to finish a long time WIP because the right idea has finally come along and I'm very glad she made it out of that drawer that has proved to be the end of the line for some other pieces over the years.

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 4, Summer Dreaming

For those who missed the first three parts - which you can find here, here, and here - and those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started.

I hadn't expected to finish the last part of the shoes so quickly. With the holidays and vacation days, however, and nothing else to do (that I wanted to do, at least ;-)), I concentrated on binge watching - or hearing, rather - crime shows and beading.
Oh, and some crafty documentaries which show in detail how someone is making something, a hat, a wooden inlay chessboard, a barrel or a church window, for example.
It may sound silly, but if my brain refuses to shut off, it helps me to pretend that I'm in one of those documentaries and someone else is watching me. It makes me concentrate on each stitch, each bead even more, the sounds of the thread going through the denim, the snipping sound of the scissors. It doesn't always work, but if it does, it's perfect.
It helps me to calm down and shut the outside world and its problems out for at least a while which is something I really need at the moment.

Back to the shoe, though.
For this side I had chosen another sleeping cat. Now I have three sleeping cats under blue sky and only one caterpillar, but they were so perfect in size and they all have their own charm. Maybe I'll have to get high top sneakers next time, so I can use Heather's vertical designs as well.
"Summer dreaming" is a white cat sleeping on a fence. The position reminds me a lot of the way my Merlin and Greebo liked to sleep which makes me smile every time. I can also imagine that this is my White Dude sleeping under a California sun before those crazy people dragged him off to Germany (if you don't know the story, it was for his best, really).

Just like the caterpillar, this little fellow was not easy to fit onto the shoe. I think I tried the pattern three times before I finally found the right size and position to get his tail on there and still not lose one of his legs to a hole. The sun wasn't as lucky, it had to squeeze into the corner.

If you wonder, by the way, what happened to the rest for my hands, well, I found that I happened to have one tube of the color that is still on backorder after all, so I couldn't stop myself. It went surprisingly well most of the time.
I mislaid the some of the blue for the sky instead, but I ordered so much that that didn't matter. Someone also ordered much too much brown, no idea how long I thought that fence would be. Maybe watching Tom Sawyer's famous fence painting scene had confused me.
So I guess I'll have to think of a design in brown, blue and white now. Any ideas? ;-)

And here's our cat now. I bet he's dreaming of chasing mice and his favorite treats!
I even managed to clean off the blood that had been shed. My friends told me to see it as blood sacrifice to the bead goddess. She has to be really happy because I sacrificed more than once, not to mention all the needles that gave their lives for this project.

This is what the shoes look like worn. I have been asked if I am going to wear them outside, and I keep joking that I don't even know when the chance will come up again with Covid around. Let's say that I won't wear them on a regular basis to avoid dirt and damage, but I will definitely show them off eventually.

Sorry that I couldn't take better pictures, but it's hard enough to get my big feet into a picture - they are a EU 43 which translates to a US 11 1/2 and a UK 9 ;-)

Now what will be next?

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 3, The CATerpillar

For those who missed the first two parts - which you can find here and here - and those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started.

As you know if you follow this blog, I had taken a break after the first shoe was finished. I often have to do that after a big project to regather motivation and to give my hands some rest, so I did my bauble project instead. I also sneaked in the wire fairy mouse which was nice as this year has been very much about beads and a bead embroidered snowman ornament for a gift.
On the 11th I officially announced the start on the first side of the second shoe, though, and I finished it last night around 2 am. Two weeks, that's not too bad. Now, however, my hands definitely need a bit of rest, my left wrist is hurting, and I decided I really have to look for a thimble for my right hand. The last small section of the shoe tested my patience and my fingers big time!

For the motif I had chosen one of my absolute favorites of Heather's cats. The original gouache is on my wall looking down on me. It's the CATerpillar. I have never asked Heather where she got the idea for this one, I'll just imagine New Zealand has brightly colored caterpillars with little cat heads ;-)

One of the difficulties was to fit him onto the shoe without the holes cutting into him. I'm actually quite proud of myself for fitting the head and antennae so neatly between those holes.
I'll let the picture speak for itself and hope you are going to stay around for side #4. The pattern is chosen, but not transferred to the shoe yet, also one important bead color is on backorder, so my hands will get their little break ... if I can't think of anything else to do, that is ...

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 2, Biskit's Bum (ft. Hannah Needle)

For those who missed the first part - which you can find here - and those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started.

For the second side of the first shoe I chose another favorite of mine among her paintings, Biskit's Bum.
Here's the original painting.

What makes this one even more special is that Biskit was Heather's own cat who lived to be over 20 years old ❤️ ...




If you compare this to the Lazy Cat, you see that there's less detail, therefore I thought it would be quicker to do, but maybe that and the fact that I broke even more needles than the last time wasn't that good for motivation. I'm not a master at repetitive patterns.

I didn't give up, however, so one shoe is finished now, yay!
It was too dark already, I had to take the picture with flash which obviously changes the colors a bit. If I can get a better picture tomorrow, I'll add it to the post.

Last but not least let me introduce you to Hannah Needle, my employee of the month. She was at my side through the hardest part of the shoe, literally speaking, towards the heel. She had to give up four beads before the shoe was done. Her sacrifice will not be forgotten.

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 1, zzzzzz... or Lazy Cat

After my last shoe adventure  I had vowed not to work on something big that fast again. How silly of me. I thought of the HeatherCats and knew there would not just be another pair of sneakers in my "near" future. I wanted to go a step further. With the last shoes I didn't have to think about a pattern. With vertical seams in the fabric and bugles for beads there wasn't much room for a pattern. But the HeatherCats ....

For those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started. As a matter of fact the cat in the first bracelet I ever made after her paintings was also the first cat that I chose as my first shoe pattern.

This project really needs a lot of patience which I'm not necessarily blessed with. I beaded this two beads at a time, and there are a lot of beads in this.
So, instead of writing one big blog post sometime in spring I decided to write one for each side of both shoes as there will be four different patterns, anyway.
Here's the first one.

Heather called her gouache painting "zzzzzz..." which is very accurate. I don't know if the other name came from me, but in my head it was always "Lazy Cat".
Lazy Cat is sleeping on a wall in a garden under blue skies. It's very peaceful and you can almost hear birds singing and bees buzzing even if you can't see them.
This is the original painting.

It's not always easy to transfer Heather's distinctive style into beads, but she graciously allowed me to make changes where needed. That is one thing in the loomed HeatherCat pieces and another in a bead embroidery piece as I was to find out. She likes to use points and swirls as in the plants, and often there are details with fine, differently colored borders. That's where I had to let my fantasy play.

The second challenge was to fit the details on the shoe which obviously isn't rectangular. So I had to lose the tree for example and the flowers couldn't be quite as high. I also had to deal with some seams even if there weren't any vertical ones.
Last but least there was the part next to the heel which is thicker as the rest of the shoe, just like the part where the tongue meets the denim towards the tip.
Doing just that little white part to the left of the big plant took me forever because  I had to work blind again and find the right spot to poke through the layers - with the help of pliers, of course - and I don't even want to talk about the part on the right where I settled for a few stray beads.
I won't show you the pictures of the inside, but if you ever need my DNA, you can try to get it from the blood stains ;-) I also did my best to help out the needle industry. My record was five brandnew needles in one hour.

I honestly can't believe I even made it that far. I already started the second side when I was waiting for a bead order, so hopefully it won't take too long until you get to see more.

Theme jewelry

When I started making jewelry, I never thought of making theme jewelry, well, not on purpose at least. I didn't even think much about that subject before the Jewelry Artisans Community chose it for this month's blog carnival.

What is theme jewelry? That's jewelry with a theme of course.
What themes are there although it would probably be easier to ask what themes aren't there.
Seasons or holidays. Awareness, of a disease for example. Nature. Animals. Zodiac signs. Birthstones. These are just a few of the popular ones that come to mind.

Looking back myself I can tell that one or the other theme related piece sneaked into my work early on. The cats were there first. Of course they were, as wire crochet cat head pendants.
After that, however, I can't really remember any theme jewelry. My muse ran wild and it was possible that after finishing it a piece reminded me of a theme, but I didn't plan anything.
That changed when I started bead looming. Suddenly I felt I had all kinds of possibilities not only to pursue a theme once, but to make whole series.
There were animal print cuffs when I needed contributions for our local zoo raffle.
I played with classic fabric patterns like Gingham, Herringbone, Argyle, and Houndstooth.
Floors, tiles, and rugs inspired me.
I created animals like the panda, the unicorn or cats sitting in a window.
Halloween and Christmas items turned up. Art Nouveau. Bollywood. Symbols like the Eye of Horus or a pentacle.

Wow. Until now I didn't even realize how looming changed my style or should I say added to it.

You may wonder why I haven't shared any pictures yet. Well, now we are coming to two series that have become special to me.

One of them are of course the HeatherCats.
For those who really don't know them yet, they are a collaboration of my friend Heather, a New Zealand artist with a whimsical mind, and myself, Cat. Therefore the HeatherCats. Oh yes, and they are cats. Who would have thought, eh?
I transfer Heather's paintings into wearable jewelry. I love them, and I'd love to make the cats in all kinds of color combinations. Some of the designs were so perfect for color variations that I already did them, like the Shadycats for example.
There's no chance I can pick a favorite, either. Heather, another cat lady with three adorable cats called Biskit, Cookie, and Pudding who also fosters kittens, knows exactly the ways how to paint a cat and make you go squee, smile, chuckle or even laugh out loud.
This collage doesn't even show all of them and definitely not all of them yet because I want to make more. If you want to see pictures of the originals, by the way, you can find them with each listing in my shop. Of course you can also visit Heather's deviantART to see not only cats, but also her other work.

The other one is a fairly recent addiction that started with Edgar Allan Poe. I had been wanting to loom his portrait for a while, in a negative space version. Instead a sudden inspiration told me to use the whole photo, but cut down on the number of colors to see what would happen.
When I showed the pendant on my Facebook page, a friend there suggested that there had to be a Tesla pendant as well.
I was doomed, in more than one way. After following another suggestion - Audrey Hepburn - I remembered that Bela Lugosi had been on the top of my list for a long time. I had figured he would become a panel, but now he became a pendant instead. Dracula led to Frankenstein led to the Phantom of the Opera led to Nosferatu. For comic relief Laurel and Hardy sneaked their way in.
Why I was doomed in more than one way, you want to know? I got drawn into classic horror. Beside wire and beads movies are one of my obsessions and now I went back in time. Dracula, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man .... seriously, how do you make a pendant of an invisible man? I'm still chewing on that one. Phantom of the Opera. Freaks. Now that movie poster would be a very ambitious project. I put it on my list. There's so much on my list. Not just looming. What about the wire? My hooks are lonely. I gotta take a break. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah .........................

Yup. Looks like it is almost time for the Hug Me jacket. With beads, please. Maybe I could loom one. Do you think I could? There's that pattern I really need to make first, though.
Breathe, breathe ..... calm down.
There you go. Doomed, that's me.
Here's a picture of the portrait pendants I got so far. I'm still not sure why I picked a picture of Cary Grant in which he didn't smile, but made one of his faces.

Well, I guess after all that I could say that I am making theme jewelry.
If you want to hear what the other JAC members have to say about the subject of theme jewelry, have a look at the following links. I have no doubt it will not sound as crazy as what you've just read ;-)

Jewelry Art by Dawn
Violetmoon's Corner
The Crafty Chimp
Echoes of Ela

The HeatherCat news ticker

It has been a while that I talked about the HeatherCats. I have a pile of finished projects that still need pictures or need to be listed, and I have been in a bit of beading frenzy with some wire thrown in during the breaks. Too many ideas and no one volunteering to do the work that comes after the beading ;-)

Remember Heather's stamps one of which is the Dalicat? Petcat is another one of them and I fell in love with it right when I saw it first. I wasn't sure how to fit the hand in, though. After talking to Heather we made the decision to make Petcat a sleeping cat. Sleeping cats around me and I relax to the point where I can't keep my eyes open. Actually I wrote about "cat sleeping gas" a few years ago.
These are not the news I wanted to tell you, though.
I wanted to talk a little about my work to give you an idea what is behind pieces like these.

1. Color decisions ^..^
I love black cats, that's not new. I am always tempted to make each cat black to the extent that I am running after Greebo to paint him. Ok, the last part is not true, but the first part is if it relates to beaded cats. Heather's cats are often colorful, though, and their bright and happy colors make me smile (a little hint, there's pink on my next bead order list).
So why did I choose white, silver and black this time? I guess what I liked about the pendants was the contrast of the shimmering white with the beautiful AB finish and the black that I so love.
The transparent silver luster is one of my favorite colors at the moment, and I thought it would make a great contrast color with the background and the shiny rug.
 
Also ....
2. Thread colors ^..^
It's not new and not difficult to understand that transparent beads change their color a little with the thread you use. I like to use black thread to darken a grey background a little for example, like in a night scene, a white thread lets the transparent colors stick out more. You have to look at the single bead, though. I have a lovely transparent purple on hand, and all pearls together in their tube don't look very light, but white thread washes the color out so much that you hardly see it which is a pity (more so because I had to rip up a piece once).
The transparent silver luster, however, oh man, I don't even know where to start. It has quickly become one of the colors I don't want to do without.
I used it as accent color for the white Petcat and as fur color for the bracelet, with white thread on the left and black thread on the right. Can you tell the difference?

3. Pattern ^..^
Why is the tail up on the bracelet and down on the pendants and why is it different from the stamp design?
Part of it is just artistic whim. Yes, the stamp has a really cool design, but can you imagine it in beads? Not with an extension. I want the HeatherCats not only to look good, but also to be good to wear without parts falling off. The bigger tail is safer. Again, I don't change anything without talking with Heather about it first.
On the pendants the tail going down means the pendant is not as wide and therefore better to wear, and yes, I really did want to do that little hole to make it look interesting!

Did you also notice that there are differences in how the cat looks in the bracelet compared to the pendants?
The pendants were loomed in a different direction, but I didn't change the pattern. Since the beads are not square, that changes the proportion.

4. Re-weaving ^..^
Most of the times I re-weave my warp threads back into the piece. The bigger a piece, the more warps to weave back in.
Extensions like the ear and tail on the bracelet that are loomed - I have also done them in brick stitch before - mean more warps, more re-weaving.
The little holes formed by the tail on the pendants going down instead of up ... more warps. If I make something like this, I have to make sure I have enough thread on my loom to be able to weave them in on all sides, quite fiddly, but strangely relaxing to me most of the time. You'll hear more about re-weaving when I'll be talking about my latest experiment, by the way.

That was a long post, sorry about that, but hopefully it gave you a bit of an idea of what I do.
Oh, and don't forget that you can find all HeatherCats including the Petcats in my Zibbet shop!

A new HeatherCat or The moustache

I can almost hear you. "Wait. You told us HeatherCats don't have whiskers, and now what ... there's one with a whole moustache?"

Yup, there is, a very fine moustache even, obviously well cared for.

Heather was inspired by someone famous when she created this design for a stamp. Can you tell who it was?

****cat (no spoilers) in this silver and black version will be in my Zibbet shop soon, of course in the HeatherCats section.

HeatherKittens!!

The HeatherKittens made their entrance into the HeatherCats universe and they are so cute!
You know that the HeatherCats are bead loomed after the paintings of Heather, sometimes with little changes - always approved by her of course - what you probably do not know, however, is Heather's new line of stamps that you can find here.
One of them inspired these little fellows.

If you look closely, you can see that there are actually two different designs.

The grey and the golden one do look a little miffed, on the other hand no one ever really knows what cats think, right? Maybe they are concentrating on that one important pounce to wrestle down their toy mouse.

The funky lilac and fuchsia kitten and the one that is pearly white - I like to refer to it as the Ghost Kitten - are obviously in a good mood. Look at those contagious smiles, they make me smile every time.

Of course there is no saying yet in what other color combinations they will turn up. Maybe you even want to tell me your favorite colors?

And no HeatherCats post without the original!

You can find all HeatherKittens in the HeatherCats section of my Zibbet shop.

Shadycats and the Queen

You may ask yourself what they have to do with each other. The Shadycats are a HeatherCat design and the Queen, well, is the Queen.
In fact it has to do with color combinations.
In this post I told you that I couldn't resist making several Shadycats. Even after writing the post I kept going. Usually I can't make a design too often too quickly, but in this case I just could have kept making it in more and more colors which really made me wonder.
Finally a thought hit me ... and a memory from my childhood.

When I was a kid, we watched commercials. There were only three TV programs which weren't available around the clock and for the longest time we had black and white TV (yes, I am that old). We guessed commercials - who was the first to recognize the brand before the name was said?
Then we got color TV and I found myself being fascinating with the "hair studio" of a certain brand. Imagine 70s hairdos and customer questions "Since I started using your shampoo for greasy hair, I have dandruff. What should I do?" I still remember that the answer was to use both the shampoo for greasy hair and the one for dandruff. Smart. That way they could sell two products.
What really intrigued me were the colors, though. There was the yellow line for this and the blue line for that, and all the bottles were standing on a table, the shampoo, hairspray, conditioner and I don't know what together. I still get that feeling today when I go grocery shopping and see shampoos in harmony, neatly lined up in their shelves.

Another color lesson came from my stamp collection, though. We all had a "stamp collection" as children. We were not very professional, but there were times when we were at least quite enthusiastic. What's left over from our family collections is in one of my drawers. I gave away some of them here and there, traded for comics, sent some to a friend for her grandson and so on, but she is still there, in lovely colors and in my favorite design ... the Queen. As you can see, I seem to have been especially fond of the Arnold Machin stamp (probably because it was the easiest for me to lay my hands on).
We had stamps with animals on them, colorful flowers, buildings and whatnot, but I loved to look at the Queen in all colors and wished I had even more of them.

That is the same feeling when I look at the Shadycats. I'd like to see them in many more color combinations.
So far there are six and I already feel the temptation coming over me again ....

They are all available in my Zibbet shop except for the blue one which is already sold.

Love

Love comes in all sizes, colors and shapes. We love cheese, our favorite actor and the color blue. We love our family, our friends and our pets. We love from afar, silently, secretly and too much. We love flowers, songs and our new outfit.
Don't roll your eyes, I am actually going somewhere with this and it's neither philosophical nor heavy stuff ;-)

This month's subject for the blog carnival at the Jewelry Artisans Community was love, in honor of the Valentine's Day. Our February challenge was to make something related to that day, but without the use of red or pink. What usually comes to mind next are hearts. I have a personal reason of not being fond of Valentine's Day, so I struggled a bit with the subject.
Then my dear Heather came up with a brand new painting. When I saw it, I knew I not only had a new HeatherCat on my to-do list, but also the perfect piece for both the challenge and the blog carnival .... what do you think?

For more posts please check out the other members' blogs!

Bead Sophisticate
Jewelry Art by Dawn
Ponder the Cat

And the winner is ..........................

You didn't really think I'd just blurt the name out, did you? Let me tell you about my morning first.
It started with Greebo knocking a tin off the nightstand and rolling it around on the floor. Although I didn't have much sleep - which is my very own fault as I knew the brats don't care how early in the morning I go to bed - I gave up pretty quickly. Once he tires of knocking around stuff, he usually plops down on my head next. Today I wasn't sure if I was ready for that.

So I got up, fed the monsters, did a bit of this and that and then wrote the list. The list has all the names from people who commented on my giveaway post and I want to thank you them for entering!
Each name got a number, then I went on to Random.org.
And the number is 3!

Now who's got the #3 on my list? It's Carole! Congratulations, Carole! I'll send you a message and your Golden Cat will be on the way soon!

P.S. Sorry for not having a quote of the week today, but this was so much more exciting, wasn't it? ;-)

Lurking in the shadows

How many times have I tripped over a cat mysteriously turning up before my feet? How many times have I been close to a heart attack because a cat suddenly came out of nowhere? Or even worse, how many times have I been about to panic because one of my (inside!!) cats have been missing, then said cat was right behind me when I was ready to run out into the night yelling for it? And had probably been on my trail like that for the whole time I was trying to look under closets, the fridge, armchairs and the washing machine?
Many, many, MANY times.

Maybe that's the reason why I reacted to Heather's Shadycat with such passion. A camouflaging cat in the shadows probably brought up memories from the time I searched for Dude, a very visible white cat (I finally found him in a dark corner behind the armchair which was standing next to the wall), to the time I was convinced Esme had escaped through an intact cat screen and was running around on the scaffold at one side of the house (it was probably one of the crows, heck, both are black, it's an easy to make mistake, isn't it?).

I couldn't stop at just one color combination and although I made three of the Shadycat pendants until now, I am by no means done with it.

Tell me which color combinations you would like to see and who knows? If I have the beads, I might just make it!

All of these are available in my Zibbet shop now, the grey/white one, the metallic matte one and the silver lined shiny one.
The black and white one is of course Heather's original painting.

The Golden Cat - A HeatherCat giveaway!

Last week I told you about my new loom. By now we have made our first piece together and just as I promised, I'll have a giveaway. One of you will own a very special HeatherCat pretty soon.
Meet the Golden Cat, a variation of the Black Cat.
Golden Cat comes as a bead loomed (obviously!) pendant.
She is from golden Duracoat Delicas with some matte dark golden shadows. Her eyes remind me of the sea, a transparent bluegreen. The background is a beautiful misty blue grey, one of my favorite colors. She comes with a golden ball chain of 23.5 inch or 60 cm length.

Now, what do you have to do to enter my giveaway? It's actually pretty easy. Hop over to my Zibbet shop where the HeatherCats are sold exclusively, pick your favorite among them and let me know in a comment to this post.
Don't forget to give me an e-mail address or some way I can contact you if you are the lucky one!
You have time until next week Saturday midnight my time (the time zone is called UTC +1 if you need look up the difference), well, actually until Sunday morning when I get up, but that depends on my cats, so you may be lucky or not. It's the 22nd of February.
Better do it right away if you want the Golden Cat, so you won't forget.
Once I am up on Sunday and have survived the feeding of the monsters, I will give each comment a number and then draw the winner with the help of Random.org.

Good luck!

It's a ...

JaLa! I can't tell you the whole story, it would be too long anyway, so I'll just give you the short version.

A JaLa is a bead loom, sturdy, well made and adjustable. I have been wanting one for quite some time. Karma has been very good to me, but that's part of the long story.
To keep it really short .... tadaaaaaaaa!
Please give a warm welcome to Magica De Spell, my new bead loom!! Isn't she a beauty?

She is named after a Disney witch whose character was created by Carl Barks whose cartoons I love. I'm digressing, however.
In honor of Magica I want to pass some of the good karma along. The first piece she and I made together is a special HeatherCat. It's almost finished and there will be a giveaway soon. How does that sound??

Why HeatherCats are a bit different sometimes

Last time I told you the reason why HeatherCats have no whiskers and promised to tell you about Grouchycat's yellow bird and more next time.

If you have seen Heather's cat paintings, for example on Shadowness, you may wonder why I feel the need at all to change something. Believe me, I try to stay as close to her paintings because that's just the way I feel about it. Unfortunately the beads don't always agree, though.
I never tire to say that Heather knows about these changes. I am not just running wild with her creations.

Let's take a look at the Tinycat in a Box for example.

When Heather started the Tinycat series, this is what she wrote "I got a little book of watercolour card, it has 15 pages and I'm going to fill it with tiny cats".
A cuff is not tiny. It's long, and more often than not long into the wrong direction. It wouldn't have made sense to turn the cat and its box around, though. So I dragged the design out a bit by making the window bigger and moving it over. I also cut off part of the floor and added the box corner as an extension instead.

This is the Silhouette Cat. As you see at first glance, I cut it on both sides, I left out the dark circles and took one circle off the moon. Instead I added the dangling tail. Why?
I felt that a pendant with this image would be great, but not everyone likes big pendants. To do Heather's cats justice, I need a certain space to put them on. The more complicated the painting, the bigger the piece will have to be to transfer it into a "bead painting". If I can cut something off to make the rest of that "bead painting" look better, so be it ... although it sometimes hurts a bit to do so.
The good thing is, though, I'll always be able to make another variation, like an SLN or a cuff maybe!
Now why the tail? Ok, I admit it, I love to make extensions, they are that little extra. As a crazy cat lady, how could I leave the tail out here? ;-)

Changing a tabby into a tortie?? Now that's taking it a bit too far, isn't it? You have no idea how I have struggled to make this a wearable pendant with the tabby on it, but the details were just too much. Maybe you already noticed that I usually (not always) leave out the black outlines. They simply take up precious bead space. Now imagine this tabby without those outlines and keep in mind that beads don't make fine lines very well (remember the whiskers post). No matter how hard I tried, it looked like a two color blob with two small black blobs, so that's why I finally went for the tortie (or calico) look.
I want to try to even go farther with this kind of change, but that's for a different post.

The last one I want to talk about is my favorite so far, the Dark Cat.

Working with all these colors was just wow. I really wanted to keep as much of them as possible, but I still had to cut a bit off the sides. Again there are no black outlines, but I kept enough of the black to keep the idea.
In fact at first I thought - no, Heather and I thought - this design would look much wilder transferred into beads, and I guess we were both glad it was not!

Oh, and why is Grouchycat's annoying bird in my pendant yellow instead of purple? Very easy, the yellow made for better contrast!