In The Cat House

Yes, I know it's usually the dog house but these cards feature cats instead!  The set I used is Spellbinders 3D Vignette Pet House and it has both a dog and cat that can go in the house.  My cards were ‘Thank You’ cards for my sister and Dad for looking after our moggies whilst we had a lovely short trip to Rome.

To start with, there’s a lot of die-cutting to make the 3D version.  I like to do this all in one go at the beginning, then start on the assembly.

To colour my cats, I put the die-cut back into the negative space and use small blending brushes to add the colour.  Our old boy, Monty, is a long-haired tabby and Leia is a tortoiseshell, so I blended a mix of brown, black and orange for her.

The finished house is lovely! So intricate but also sturdy.

Plus, it folds completely flat to fit in a standard envelope.  This card features our youngest two cats, both tabbies but one has vertical stripes and the other horizontal.  They’re a bit dim and can’t work out the cat flap to had to check-in to the cat hotel whilst we went away so this was the card for the lovely lady who looked after them there.

Another option is a non-3D card.  On the back piece, I scored just below the roof apex and glued the card front onto this to make a top-folding card.

Here are the two styles side-by-side.