The final three cats for Catabet!

Hey Beautiful People!

Are you ready to see our last three Catabet characters? Of course you are..... 

 H is for Heidi,
whose hoodie sweatshirt
had an intricate pattern
to hide all the dirt.

H! A Himalayan wHo Hoarded Houndstooth!

Heidi is named for supermodel and host of my favorite guilty pleasure tv show, Project Runway, Heidi Klum! Here she is in a classic houndstooth ensemble: 

You think I'm kidding, don't you? It actually is Heidi in a halloween costume that I found on the internets when I was searching for her wearing houndstooth. Here's a better image of how she looks on a normal day: 

As mentioned in the rhyme, Heidi is a Himalayan cat. 

Boy oh boy, did I set myself up for a challenge here, having to figure out how to paint a houndstooth pattern on a 3-d object. Fortunately I found, of all silly things, a tutorial on how to paint the pattern on your fingernails, which was very helpful.  It's not perfect, but no too bad, if I do say so myself: 

 Now we'll move on to R: 

R is for Ralphie,
who loathed getting wet
'til he found the right duds
at the raingear outlet!   

(alternate ending could be on the internet)

Ralphie is named for the Prince of Polo, Ralph Lauren. Oddly enough, it was hard to find an image of him actually wearing a polo shirt, but this is a classic: 

 Ralphie needed an umbrella, which I fashioned out of a little turned bowl, which you see sitting next to the other found wood I used to make the figure: 

 I was happy to be able to make a Russian Blue cat for this letter, as my family had one when I was a kid named Greylock, after a book my mother had as a child: 

 So here's our Ralphie in his yellow Raincoat, Rainboots and Rainbow umbRella!

 Last, but certainly not least, we come to our final character in Catabet--the letter T: 

 T is for Tommy,
who cared not who knew
that he danced all day long
in a hot pink tutu!

T! A Tiger who Twirls in Tuille!

Tommy is named for....you guessed it....fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, (who's also a fan of houndstooth!)

 Making a tutu out of wood was one of my challenges, which I decided to do by layering concentric scalloped circles: 

 Figuring out which ballerina pose was most iconic (and doable!) was the next challenge. 

It would have been nice to have Tommy be en pointe, but I settled for the classic 5th position. 

 So.....that's it. I did it! Woohoo!  

Thanks to all of you, once again, for your comments and words of encouragement, but most of all, for your financial support to make Catabet a reality. Knowing I was funded early really helped me push to get these figures done while the Kickstarter campaign was still alive.  Sometime tomorrow, you'll get an email from Kickstarter saying this project has successfully funded. You probably won't hear from me again until I schedule the photo shoot this spring, and I'll contact those of you who pledged for custom figures or original pieces from the book closer to the launch date for the book. 

Speaking of which, I am planning on having an open studio event this October to show all 26 of the original cats at once, so if you're in the Portland area or want to come, mark your calendars. If you're in the Los Angeles area, there's a possible show in the works that might include figures from Catabet AND Alphabird, so I'll let you know more details about that once we've finalized them--probably late this year.  

If you're reading this and haven't pledged yet, it's now or never, folks! Click here!

take care,
Hilary