It's Cool to be a Cat!

When I saw this month's prompts from Mixed Media Art Journey, I knew exactly what I was going to do and I love how things ended up.

The prompts were: Make a tag / Use blue / Add a face / Use something recycled / Add a border / Include song lyrics.  
I didn't need to make a tag as I have quite a supply of #8 manilla tags.  I added a piece of mop up sheet  from cleaning my brayer (Dylusions After Midnight/London Blue paint), sealed, dried and trimmed the edges.

Although I had already used something recycled, I decided to add a piece of kitchen towel which had been used to clean a stencil (blue harlequin pattern).  It is difficult to see the pattern, but it is just discernable if you look closely.  This was glued, dried, the edges torn round then neatened with a file.

I decided to add a border before adding the face.  For this I used Versamark ink through the large Tim Holtz layering stencil: Plus (THS053) and heat embossed with detail black embossing powder along the bottom and left hand side.

The cat from the Hipster set (designed by Tim Holtz for Stamper's Anonymous) was stamped three times onto mixed media card using Jet Black Archival ink.  The matching dies were used (whole outline, head, tie, glasses) and then the layers were coloured.  The glasses were given a glossy finish by coating in Versamark ink and heat embossing with detail black embossing powder.  The head was coloured using a mixture of the Charcoal Spectrum Aqua pen and the Light Grey Kuretake brush pen.  The tie was coloured with the Blueprint Sketch distress marker to tone with the background and the suit with a mix of the Hickory Smoke and Black Soot distress markers blended out with a waterbrush.  The eyes were highlighted in green using a Staedtler Triplus fine liner pen.  The layers were then glued together before the character was added to the tag.

I chose a line of the lyrics from the song Cool for Cats by Squeeze, printed it out in two sections with my Dymo Letratag using the small font and added them to the tag below the face.  Job done!