MEET THE COFFEE CATS!

Starbucks, Kona and Java came to live with us about 11 years ago.  They got their names when Kona found a coffee bean under the kitchen sideboard and started batting it around.  The vet's office called them the coffee cats on their first visit and they've been the coffee cats ever since.

I put together the layout of my fur babies for a weekly scrap lift challenge that I've been participating in with the Fiskateers.  Cat photography credit goes to our fabulous cat sitter and professional pet photographer, Sylvia Brown.  She is wonderful and life without Sylvia would be difficult for our little family.

I wanted to use coffee themed embellishments but I didn't have any!  What's a scrappy crafter to do?  Make them yourself!  The coffee bean border came first.  This is what I used:

No, this is not a medical tool, ha ha!  This is a stamping tool.  I cut a piece of fun foam into an oval.  I then bent the oval in two and cut a shallow slit down the middle, taking care not to cut it into two, separate pieces.  In order to work with such a small stamp, I stuck it on a craft stick with a mini glue dot.  I practiced a bit on scrap paper.  By varying the amount of ink and pressure, I made the solid and split side coffee bean images with the same foam stamp.  I used Anna Griffin chocolate pigment ink.

The little hearts on the right side are paper scraps stuck to some Dollar Store stickers.  I cut them out and adhered them sticker image down.

The cups are homemade paper piecings.  I found some images that I liked on the Web and copied them to MS Power Point.  Then I resized them, printed them and created the different pieces.  I would share the templates but I sort of destroyed them in the process of creating!  The rising steam tendrils were created with Autumn Leaves Flourishes stamps and white Stampendous pigment ink.  Please note that I printed the photos on matte photo paper to make sure that my pigment ink would work.

Other than scraps of cardstock and bits of patterned paper, I used one sheet of DCWV textured cardstock for the background, Making Memories Alpha Stickers (CATS), Heidi Grace Satin Letter Stickers from the Harvest Row line (Java), Cloud 9 Rub On Alphas, Outdoor line, (Kona), a black Zig writer and a Marvy Uchida gold opaque pen for Java's cup doodle.  This was a frugal layout!

Today is World Card Making Day and I have a scrap table with a few new cards in process.  Hope you are making cards today, too!  Scrapbook Royalty is accepting cards for their Cards for Troops campaign until November 1.  If you would like to help, details are on their site (link is on this blog to your right).

Thanks for looking--and meeting my kitties!  Have a wonderful weekend!