OCC Challenge - Pet Parade

This month my good friend, Jenny Gropp, is hosting the weekly challenges over at Our Creative Corner, and she graciously asked me to be the guest designer for this week's challenge! What a great week I'm having! The theme for the challenge this week is Pet Parade - use a cat or dog image, but if you don't have one, then you may substitute another animal image.

For my card, I started with this week's sketch from Splitcoast Stampers (SC236). Next, I pulled out my stash of cat-themed papers and stamps and decided that the paper I used at the top would be perfect - it's a 12"x12" piece that has a cat collar across the top with the tags hanging down. I selected the section with these three tags because they went perfectly (or is it purrfectly...) with my stamp and to describe my own three cats (not that we have real mice in the house, only cat nip filled ones)! The collar paper is from Carol Wilson Fine Arts and the paw print paper is from Rhonna Farrer.

The stamp of the three cats is from Class Act Stamps and the sentiment is from Whipper Snapper Designs. The twill ribbon is from Creative Impressions and was colored with Copic markers and then stapled to the sentiment layer using the Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher Stapler. Finally, I added some rhinestones to the collar and to the crown.

Please check out the other sample cards from the OCC designers on the OCC blog and remember, there is no time limit on the OCC challenges - feel free to participate whenever you are able. To play along, upload your creation to your blog or gallery, then leave us a comment linking to your project so we can check it out. If you upload to SCS, remember to use keyword: OCCC.

That's about it! Thanks for looking! Have a great weekend!

Happy Mother's Day from the cats...

We are very fortunate to have wonderful neighbors who take care of our cats for us when we are away. Since they are surrogate 'parents' for them, the cats give them Mother's Day and Father's Day cards each year... ;-) This card is this year's Mother's Day card. The stamp was perfect to depict our three cats, who all have coloring that is black, gray or a combination thereof.

One of the fun things about the Krafty Kats group I belong to is that each month we take turns putting together a kit of papers and embellishments for each member and the next month we have 'show and tell' for all the cards and projects that were made using the kit supplies. There is usually so much in each kit that we end up with lots of leftover scraps and embellishments, so I'm trying to use them up. The black and white components of this card are all from one of our previous kits.

Our cats are all females, and since this is a Mother's Day card, I added some pink accents. I also used last week's sketch from Splitcoast Stamper's sketch challenge. I don't know who the patterned paper is from, but the floral papers are double sided, which makes them good for this kind of layout. I used a Martha Stewart punch to cut the edges of the black and white vertical strips, then adhered them to the floral panel and wrapped some grosgrain ribbon around the seam. I then layered a black flower sticker strip on top of the ribbon.

The cat image was cut out using an oval Nestabilities die, then I doodled some circles around the edges and colored them in with a pink Copic Atyou Spica marker. I then matted it on black and pink layers that were cut out using the Labels Three Nestabilites. Each of the mats also has doodling on the borders. The flowers were matted on a pink scalloped circle to make them stand out more and a black and white flower button was affixed to the center with a pink embroidery floss bow.

I added some of the same elements to the inside of the card. I matted the corners with the polka dot scalloped paper and added the pink matted floral paper panel. The sentiment was stamped using a pink marker and then I went over it with the pink Spica marker to give it a little sparkle.

It's a busy card, but it was fun to make and I used up quite a bit of the leftover kit! Hope your week is going well. Thanks for looking!

Change is good!

For the last few weeks, I've been working with the wonderful Heather Taylor on a custom blog header and watermark. For those of you who are reading this through Feedblitz, click on the link for Robin's Rubber Room in the email so you can check out the new look! Let me know what you think! Heather is a dream to work with and I highly recommend her for anyone looking for this type of design work.

This is a card I made a while back using the supplies from one of the kits from my stamp group, the Krafty Kats. This little bug-eyed kitty ogling the terrified goldfish cracks me up! And I thought the sentiment went with it perfectly, even though they are from different companies!

Hope it gives you a good laugh! Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

Card Details:
Patterned paper: ??
Stamps: Class Act (cat with goldfish bowl); Rubber Soul (sentiment)
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Misc.: Copic Markers, ribbon, cat eyelet, tag, black sticker strips, ric rac.