The final Twofer challenge

 The current Twofer challenge is the very last one - lots of us are going to miss the monthly challenge of using the same stamp, die or stencil to make two different cards for different occasions. This month's theme is Dog/Cat so of course I chose cat: 

Excuse the over exposed photo, the only way I could avoid having my shadow on the cards was to put them in very bright light! It's that sort of a day. The stamp I've used was bought from a cat gift shop on Facebook, there was no branding on the package so I hope it isn't made by one of those Chinese copycat places! I was very tempted to fussy cut just the tail and use it for an ostrich feather on a fancy hat, but I couldn't find the ladies head stamp I wanted to use it with, so stuck to using it conventionally. 

I am sharing this pair at Twofers - Cat/Dog 

Now a look at the separate cards. 

Received wisdom, in greetings card shops, seems to be that cats appear on cards for women and dogs on cards for men. yet almost all the men I know are cat lovers (apart from my brother, who loves dogs enough to make up for all the others) while most of the dog lovers I know are women. 

So, I wanted to make a masculine looking cat themed birthday card. With that in mind, I kept to a very restricted colour scheme of blue and black, and used pencils to colour my cat as a ginger tabby because I once heard that most ginger cats are male. I don't know how true that is, but I've only ever met one female ginger, and she was really more ginger and white. 

The sentiment is from the same stamp set as the image, and the border is made with a Darice embossing folder and colour-core card, sanded to reveal the core colour. 

I am sharing this with 

Sweet Stampin - Feature an animal  

Little Red Wagon - Animal Antics  

The Male Room - 8th Birthday  

Having failed in the ostrich feather department, I decided to make my second card a Christmas card. 

I die cut a Santa hat to add to my cat, and used patterned papers from my stash for the background. The sentiment is cut from one of the papers in my stash and the bow is from a bundle of festive goodies a friend surprised me with a few months ago. 

I am sharing this with 

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes 

Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - Anything Goes  

Christmas Crafts All Year Round - O or P - P is for Pussycat

Addicted to Stamps and More - Christmas