How can it be March already?

Funny how that happens, you just blink, and you

realize you've lost 3 months.....grin....

I always look forward to Wintertime, with big expectations of lots of creative time and a list of projects that I sometimes spend months planning and thinking about.

Then when it arrives, I end up these days, more like a bear in

Winter, wanting to hibernate.

So I keep in practice, at least every couple of days

with my Artist Trading Coins.

As I find when you keep your hands and head busy

with creativity usually, one thing leads to another.

Last year, I had started a series of 

Artist Trading Blocks

with wonderful, quick and easy kits from

Retro Cafe Art

I loved the Artist Trading Coin 'Spring Fever'

I'd made using paper flowers from

Retro Cafe Art, that I didn't want to just stick

it away in my ATCoin book, so I had a play around

with one of the Artist Trading Block kits and 

channeled a bit of wishful thinking

for a change of season soon.

( Still snowing, raining and general Winter at my home).

Will be adding this one to the collection, that at

some point will take up a wall in the art room.

More nail holes....grin...

Something of which, I am sure 

Sir Barkley McMuffin Butt

will enjoy plotting about reaching up the walls

to get to all the pretties hanging up there.

As you can see, Barkley's growing like a weed, 

and each month as he's sprouting, I'm still playing around

with the artsy apps and digitally changing up his photos.

6 months old, almost 8 pounds, and 28 1/2 inches from

back feet to nose in a stretch. His 1/2 Maine Coon is

regally showing up.

And although he manages to monopolize most of my time

being a kitten mum of a moose kitten, it doesn't change

that we still miss our dear Oliver Howard any less.

I was motivated a few weeks ago, to give tribute to my boy,

after seeing a series of Victorian Sweetheart Eyes, as 

traditional gift of a loved one's eye to give remembrance.

I did my version with a metal frame from Retro Cafe Art,

and chose a photo of Oliver Howard's gaze, which wasn't easy,

as going through the photos to pick just the right one.

Sealed with Glossy Accents and placed on a clear

acrylic mini-easel also from Retro Cafe Art, 

Oliver Howard is there on the mantel in the art room

at a glance when I think of him.

If you're missing a pet that has passed, I encourage you

to try this for yourself, it does give a strange peace to the heart to see it daily as a reminder of how special they are.

And as I said before, still making my 

Artist Trading Coins

here's a few more to have a boo at ....

Using a variety of the wonderful graphics

from all of my favourite graphic designers.

From Tumble Fish Studio (Retired), Crowabout StudioB,

Itkupilli 

and many others...

So it may be March, it may be unseasonably cold

and icky outside, but I do hope you all are 

managing to have some rest, and creative time

in your neck of the woods.

and Barkley says, 

"Be Creative, but don't forget to Cuddle your Pets" 

Enjoy!