If I Was Into Printed Cardboard Items.....

We all know how cats love boxes. ANY kind of box. They have to sit in it - there's some unwritten law that doesn't allow them to pass up the opportunity to utilize that square cardboard container.  Their DNA says 'MUST DO!'

 

I've been moving boxes around, most of them full, but some empty ones.  I tossed one with a partial side missing into the kitchen and of course Rudy had to ooze into it through the hole since it fell upside down. Mini cave time.  My SO comes in and I said "don't bump the box, there's a cat in it."

 

"Which one" (meaning which cat).

 

"Rudy, he's in Cat Jail right now and can't come out".

 

That cracked him up and I described how I needed to put bars on the sides with magic marker, wanted posters on the front and a mug shot somewhere and Cat Jail in big letters across the top. 

 

He said "why can't you have those printed up and sell them?"

 

"Because it's just a cardboard box and would be difficult to ship a single one flat?"

 

"NO! No No No No. It can be done, don't cut down the idea before you think it through."

 

But seriously, while I DO like the idea of a Cat Jail set up on every desk to keep the cat off the computer keyboard, I don't think an individual flat box can be shipped without damage through the postal system. 

 

Now DECALS to put on your OWN box to turn it into a Cat Jail, that would be do-able.  LOL.  Not that I'm going to follow through with the idea, I've got way too much on my plate as it is.  But it would be nice to see.

The Chocolate Eclairs

Well, no digital camera means I can't get many pictures up here - HOWEVER Gail over at Cat Faeries does carry my items and she put up a nice picture of the éclairs I make.

I use chocolate brown felt, tan polar fleece, white felt and fiberfill (plus catnip).  I waffled over how to do the cream filling out the end, experimenting with folding and twisting the felt, and came up with this which looks neat. It's a 1 1/4" circle folded in half, then the ends pushed in. I sew it right into the seam of the end. The éclairs are hand stitched closed at the other end, and everything else is done on the sewing machine.  They are 6" long and 2" wide. 

 

I'd love to do a cream puff, but the arch of the top of the puff isn't very realistic with polar fleece.

Bottled Catnip For The Renaissance Faire

Today I played around with labels and tags.  One of the things I’m trying out this year at Pennsic is individual bottles of catnip. 

 

In the interest of repurposing/recycling I stopped at a north side liquor shop, walked across the parking lot to where the railroad tracks passed by on the east side of the building (behind a screen of trees) and picked up two dozen mini-alcohol bottles that had been drunk by underage kids and tossed there to hide the evidence. 

 

Yes, free bottles. Three were even glass instead of plastic, and all but one had screw on caps.  I took them home, washed them up, clipped the little dangling metal ring off (the ring kept the cap sealed, it hangs loose now) with the tip of a scissors and peeled as many labels off as I could.  Which unfortunately was as easy as I thought it would be. 

 

No worries, I was entirely redoing the labels anyway.  Now that the bottles were thoroughly cleaned with soapy water I dried them and filled them with powdered catnip.  Each held about 4 tablespoons of catnip which is enough to satisfy at least two cats. 

 

Some simple checking around online with google searches using wording such as ‘turn of the century medicine bottle labels’ I looked at font styles, decorative framing, and wording (man were they archaic!)  I also found three images I liked – an old style drawing of a pocket watch, a black cat with arched back, and a white cat with a monocle.  Those are the three images I went with, there were other options such as a cat in a suit (he wasn’t clear enough when I shrunk it down to 1” tall) and others. 

 

The wording I liked was Professor Puss’s Powdered Elixir, Time For Catnip, So Pure You Can Eat It, “Yowl All Night” Brand Catnip, Authentic Powdered Nip, etc.  And, of course, Let Me Share With You The Drug Of My People. 

 

I did up a template rectangle for the label itself, then made 3 pages of copies of all the text and images, and cut them out in different configurations, using a glue stick to fill each label with variations.  ALL the labels are narrow enough to fit on a strip of 2” wide packing tape, which makes it very easy to just tape each to the bottles. 

 

And as an extra 'oomph' I also made little hanging tags that will be ‘tape laminated’ and hole punched, to tie on the necks of each bottle with metallic gold thread. 

 

The result is spiffy!  Classy! And Kitty Cocktails For Two!