The First Project, a Sale and a Purchase

Last night I sat down at my New Desk and completed my First Project in my new workroom (time I stopped using capitals for those words)!

This is a traditional-style design photo album. I have made it as a Christmas present for our neighbours' family, as they recently had two lovely kittens.  I hope it's ok to admit it was a bit of a practice-piece for another present I want to make for my mum... that will use more expensive materials and I wanted to try a few ideas out.  However, this is largely successful and will, I hope, make a good present that they will all like.  I can give them some "new kitten" photos too, as the kittens were from a cat that my sister was fostering. 

I'm quite pleased with how the book has turned out.  It has 12 double-sided pages, made of stiff card, but faced with some brown packing-paper (courtesy of DoCrafts online shop!).  I had the idea for the album before my last shopping expedition, so I found the orange "Meow" cats paper, by gotmoxxie.com.  The rest of the cover is Electric Blue Canford art paper (smooth surface) and Mandarin Murano art paper (textured finish).  I inked the edges of the orange papers, to make them stand out.  Each of the brown sheets inside has little stamped pawprints, in either brown / orange or blue / white.  Each page is slightly different, which makes it nicer, I think. I made it look as if kittens had just wandered about over each page!

Then today I returned home to find an order in my Etsy shop.  I sold this -

There seems to be something about these cats that people find very appealing.  I have sold several now - two in my shop.  My baby niece has one and plays with it regularly.  They are just "friendly" and people love them. I am very pleased that this one will have a new home for Christmas.  Time to make more! There's a rabbit one on the go at the moment, so I will finish that - maybe tonight.

And also, in the post I got this:

I bought this from an artist who lives and works at "Tummy Mountain" in New South Wales, Australia.  I have followed his blog for a while - it's my very favourite - and wanted some of his artwork. I couldn't resist when he produced this calendar and bought it for my new workroom.  It really couldn't have arrived with better timing! No room to show you all of it, but it has lots of the work shown in his etsy shop - http://www.tummymountain.etsy.com/ . The link to his blog is in my favourite blogs-list on the right...

Must go and let J. in... he'll be home soon and wanting his tea! 

Back later to look at all the "17 Again" blog posts...