Of Cats, Mice, Tea, and Harlequins

The Harlequin Games card is one I've been planning for some time, finally made last week. The bg stamp is SU Print Pattern, the Harlequin is a bonus pattern from the February/March 2007 issue of Stampers' Sampler magazine, and the "inchies" are CS Designs digital stamps, "Harlequin Images", and "Solitaire".

The teapot was done for a challenge by the group, ATC Artists, "Tea with Royalty", in honor of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine. I was a bit cheeky in using Alice in Wonderland images!

The other cards are ATCs, made for ATC Artist swaps with the themes, "Cats" and "Mouse House". Being a House Mouse stamps nut, I used those images instead of creating two ATCs of mice houses. The last two ATCs were made to make up for my mistake. I just had to make a story of these last, with one lucky mouse making a friend of a cat, and the other cleverly escaping through the "roof" of his house.

Seasonal Thoughts

The picture in the masthead above is of a tree on my street. It expresses for me the world of color which is autumn. Autumn is a harlequin season of biting, brisk mornings and slowly toasted afternoons. It's sunlight magnified through stained glass leaves and sunlight weakened by truncated days. Autumn is walks through silent woods on paths voluble with brittle leaves, hearts that celebrate a feast of colour while bones chill at the Dark Season's advance. Autumn brings back school days, choirs, book clubs, and football. It terminates lazy summer days, vacations, baseball, barbecues and sundown at ten. Autumn is a harlequin season.

If you think that the photo for this post seems familiar, your're right. It's the picture I used for my Hemingway-style ATC in a previous post.