The crazy cat lady and her Easter cards...

Can you believe it, after months of nothing I blog twice in 24 hours! I'd forgotten how much I loved it, and really intend to take a little time every day during the week to make a nice cuppa and sit down to write for a while. I'm loving getting back into my creative groove, and am branching out into other crafts than card making which I'm really enjoying. I will always love card making, but stamping on other mediums is just so much fun and there is so much possibility. But, we'll save that for another day as I have a much more pressing topic to attend to....

We've also been busy around the house over the past month with lots of little projects here and there. It's so much fun to be able to make changes and improvements in our home, as before we had always rented and there's only so much you can do in rental houses. I thought I would share with you one of the first ideas and projects we completed after moving in..... whether you think it's an improvement to the house, or just weird will depend on if you are a crazy cat person like me lol!

(If you're just here for the cards, please scroll to the end of the post to avoid my rambling about litter boxes ;) )

Drum roll please......

Yes, that is a kittie restroom lol!!!! Like I said, if you're not a cat lover you are probably thinking I've got a little crazy up here in our new mountain home. You may be thinking the altitude has got to me a little.... But, if you do have multiple indoor furbabies of the feline variety in your home you will be all too familiar with those unsightly litter boxes. And the smell from them. And the litter being tracked everywhere by our little darlings. So, I wanted the litter boxes in the laundry room but I did not want them out on display for all to see. While I pondered on how to pull that off, my eyes wandered to these lovely cupboards along one wall of the room.

Please excuse the mess on top, we were still in the middle of moving in and that counter had become the catch all for anything without a home yet! We are lucky to have plenty of storage in this house (although it's just the two of us, we'll revisit my assessment of storage if and when kids join the household!) so I knew we wouldn't miss having the bottom cupboards, and I hatched my kitty restroom plan. As it would involve plenty of power tools for taking out shelves and drilling holes in doors, and I'm not allowed to use said power tools, the hubby was put to work.....

 Step One: Remove the shelf that was fixed in the middle of the cupboard so kitties don't hit their heads when going to the bathroom :)

 Step Two: Remove middle door and cut out hole for cat door (whilst unknowingly showing off your growing bald patch lol!)

 Step Three: Begrudgingly pose for the camera to show off your handy work :)

 Step Four: Install cat door and rehang cupboard door.

Step Five: Set up litter boxes inside the cupboard. We've since changed to covered boxes as that's what our cats have grown up using and so were have lots of 'accidents' with the low sided open pans in the photo. 

 Step Six: The finishing touch :)

We were feeling very pleased with this new addition of the kitty restroom! The boys' reaction on the other hand seemed more along the lines of "WTF?! You want me to do what?!!!"

But with a little gentle encouragement they soon came around....

Yey, go Odie!!! Always the first to try something new :)

Silvester (the big grey one, who is more mouse than cat in temperament!) however, seems to have a deathly fear of cat doors (??!!) so we had to modify it slightly by removing the actual flapping door.

We also need to get baby locks for the doors as Taz prefers to exit the restroom by pushing open the cupboard door and racing through rather than walking through the cat door. Ahh, cats- who'd have 'em!!

It really has worked perfectly though over the month since we've had it. There's a lot less mess and smells now, and my laundry room looks nice and tidy without cat boxes on the floor on full display. We're quite proud of our litter box solution :)

Crazy cat people... us?!!!

Anyway, most of you are here for cards not litter boxes so we'll finally move along!! As I've mentioned a few times now, I have been making and donating some cards to our local cat rescue (yes, more cats!!) and they sell them to make money for the charity to feed their rescues and spay and neuter feral cats in the area. A few weeks ago, they requested some Easter themed cards to put on their stall.

I shared one yesterday, and as I've once again overloaded with pics I will share just a couple more today....

This simple cutie was made with a $ bin Easter stamp set from Michaels, and a kittie from a Personal Impressions set I picked up in England last year. I water coloured the images using distress inks, inked the edges of the cardstock with some Tea Dye, mounted on a piece of K& Company pp, and used foam squares to adhere it to the card base.

This next card uses a Penny Black stamp (Frolic), again water coloured with Distress Inks, inked on the edges with some Tumbled Glass. I rounded the corners and adhered it to a piece of kraft, rounding the corners on that also. I added some more detail with the gel pen stitching around the edge. I then stamped the card base with Hero Arts Envelope Pattern and inked the edges to give it more dimension, and finished it off with a HA sentiment from the Find Joy set.

I'm really enjoying water colouring with Distress Inks. It's so easy to get a nice look and to blend the colours- and I have the whole collection of inks so there's a huge pallet of colours available to me :) I had started to buy Copics last year but they are so pricey and I wasn't that great with the ones I had, so I'm loving that I can get a similar look with my beloved Distress Inks!

Is there anything those little wonders cannot do?!

Hi, I'm Lynsey and I'm addicted to Distress Ink (and cats, and Ikea....)

I think I may need help lol!

Love Lynsey x