Blog
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Faith the Church Cat
Rather than follow my normal formula of telling these cats’ stories and then going into the artistic inspirations behind this piece, I’m just going to have the briefest summary of Faith and instead link to this article on the website Purr-n-Fur. It’s a much better story than I could ever write, and made me cry multiple times the first time I read it. I highly recommend reading it. The tl:dr if you didn’t want to commit to the article is this: Faith was a stray adopted by the rector of St. Augustine and St. Faith’s Church on Watling Street in…
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Making a Stardew Valley Themed Early 20th Century Calendar Postcard
For this month’s mail club I decided to make a Stardew Valley themed bundle, both in honor of the 10th anniversary of the game, but also because it’s been my lifeline while I’ve been sick, giving me just enough mental stimulation while my body figures itself out. In my mail club I always include a post card with the month’s calendar in the style of these old lithographs from The Strobridge Litho. Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were a poster and ad manufacturer for over 100 years, from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s and employed some major artists…
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Romantasy Drop Announcement
If you’re my age, you remember the glory days of LiveJournal and following your favorite fantasy authors as they posted behind the scenes and bonus content from the books they’d written. The author of my favorite book, Crown Duel, blessed us with scenes from the POV of the enemies-to-lovers antagonist of the story, which were later included as bonus content in future publications. I read this book when I was twelve, and I’ve been a romantasy die hard fan ever since. My foray into modern romantasy has been a mixed bag, with A Court of Thorns and Roses being just…
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Floral Sketches
These past few months have been full of adventure. My husband and I were technically already married in July for insurance reasons (love living in the US), but we had our big ceremony in November. On the way back from our honeymoon we hit some road debris that completely wiped out a couple of wheels on my husband’s truck. Because insurance has been awful, we’ve been without a vehicle in suburban Texas for over two months. I’ve also had a bit of family drama that surfaced during the holidays, and then I had my wisdom teeth removed and it’s been…
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The holidays are over, but I’m still recovering from them. Instead of starting my next piece (which I have planned! It may or may not be another cat), I’ve been showing my partner Dragon Age Origins and making suncatchers. I got some moss agate in, and it’s been a blast to work with. I’m considering making another sun one, this one embracing the Solaire from Dark Souls theme, but connecting all those branches was repetitive and took literal hours. I don’t know, maybe that’s appropriate for something inspired by Dark Souls. Comment below if you think I should grind out…
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Simon of the HMS Amethyst
The year was 1948, on Stonecutters Island in Hong Kong when a young seaman of the Royal Navy by the name of George Hickinbottom, who had a penchant for rescuing animals, found a malnourished tuxedo kitten wandering the dockyard. He smuggled him onboard the HMS Amethyst in his coat, named him Simon, and made him the ship’s chief mouser. The next year the Amethyst was heading up the Yangtze river to Nanking to guard the British Embassy during the Chinese Civil War. About 100 miles up river they fell under fire by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) when they ignored…