Long Time Coming

When life starts happening, its really takes off! The last few months have been a whirlwind of life, leaving me behind on my holidays. No worries though, I've caught up, and I've still got my kitty by my side! I throw in this bit of info, because in the past month I found out that my little gray companion, has diabetes.
He gave us quite a scare, and after spending mother's day weekend in the ER Vet, he is doing splendidly! He was getting insulin shots 2 times a day, every 12 hours, but now he'd down to just once a day in the morning. I don't think I've seen this much spunk in his step in quite some time!

Home from the ERVet

About a week ago

Since his birthday, gosh, 6 months ago!, Smokey has also made friends with, Will (look-out Ben!). By friends, I mean he's got him wrapped around his paw. After all, who doesn't love this cat?

Smokey and Will.

Back to the holidays... While I have yet to complete them all, I have sketched them all out. And it wasn't until just recently that I realized while I'd done a card for Halloween and Christmas, I hadn't done Thanksgiving. Which was weird because I made the sketch for it. Its amazing how things get lost in the shuffle.

I had also been working on a step-by-step I was planning to put up for my new years card. However, that never got completed either. I will try and do one for the next card I do, to show the process I go through. No matter what, I always start with my sketches. Nothing can beat a good foundation. (Of course having a fully shaded piece to go by helps as well, but this is a step I often forget.) So without further delay, here are the sketches.

Thanksgiving Sketch

Valentine's Day

Guess I have less of those sketches than I thought... I'll have to find where they've wondered off to. Fortunately I do have more of the completed cards. My two most recent ones, St. Patrick's Day and the upcoming July 4th, are not yet fully complete, but what the hey. I tried something different on these two. Normally I've been working in Photoshop, leaving my layers just slightly transparent to allow the sketch to show through. But with these, I took them to Illustrator first. The St. Patty's card is at the moment, still completely vector files, while the July 4th card has become pixilized. These two cards have a much different look from my previous cards, but I rather enjoy how they look. Its probably a technique I will stick with.

Valentine's Day

St. Patrick's Day

4th Of July

Now while I'm sure you're saying, "Hey, they valentine's day cat doesn't look like Smokey", you'd be right. I did that one for my boyfriend, but do plan to modify the card to be Smokey, or go back to my original plan of using him with a box of chocolates. We'll see, I am fond of the "Be Mine". 

Once I have my Holiday Collection completed, I'll begin work on my Special Occasion Collection. This will consist of Birthday, Graduation, Mother's/Father's Day, etc. If you know any you'd like to add, please let me know. I'd like to have between 5-10. Not sure I can come up with that many 'special occasions'.