Cate Anevski

Ready for Love

A Mental Exercise

I decided last night that I absolutely needed to try to create a maze. It took some time to get the hang of it, but it was really a fun project. It will take a little time for me to clean it up and make it presentable enough to show exactly why I decided to create a maze, but I like the way the sketch turned out.

I was a very happy lady when I got to the end and it actually functioned like a maze.

A Couple of Patterns

House Party

I've been having fun lately turning drawings I've made in the past into repeating patterns for fabrics, and here are a couple of them that I particularly like. I'm trying to figure out just the right project for this one:

Opinion

Tea Towel Contest

Every year, Spoonflower hosts a tea towel calendar contest, and every year, I'm too intimidated by the idea of creating a calendar to participate. This year, I decided to try my hand at making a calendar, and I came up with this simple design. Of course, now that I got my feet wet, I'm excited to make more calendars.

You can vote for this design and the many other wonderful designs in the upper right hand corner of the Spoonflower contest page.

Yuletide Kitties, Now in Convenient Card Form

I finished the cards I created from the illustrations I showed a few days ago, and I have to say, I'm really pleased with them. I think they capture my kitty's character quite well, and they certainly put me in the mood for the holidays. I may even start decorating early!

I think the yarn ball/x-mas light string kitty is my favorite. He just looks so intent on his "helpful" task.

It's been a while since I've drawn anything using ink on paper. I've played around with so many other media lately, I forgot how enjoyable traditional drawing can be. I'll just have to come up with some more projects to take advantage of the fun.

You can find these cards in my Etsy shop.

An Artful Agenda

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to work with An Artful Agenda again, and I really had a fun time designing pages for the planner. You can get a copy of this universal planner in the Etsy shop. I've included a few photos of my pages here, but there is a lot more great artwork from the other contributors throughout the planner for you to enjoy.

Yuletide Kitties

Since it's already November, I feel the year is far enough along to start blogging about Yuletide, right? Agree or disagree, I've made up my mind.

When trying to come up with some new holiday card designs this year, kitties just seemed the obvious choice.

They're always so generous.

And helpful.

And in case you're wondering where I get my ideas, here's the little hellion who inspires me daily.

Is November too early to break out the Christmas movies? I'm really itching to watch It's A Wonderful Life, and I don't know how much longer I can resist Jimmy Stewart's siren song.

A few new things

I'm fairly certain we all have a few projects here and there that seem to get tucked away in a corner somewhere in the closet or hard drive without seeing the light of day for months and months. Every so often, we come across these projects and give them a guilty sidelong glance, knowing that we should really finish them instead of watching the entire first season of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, but we quickly tuck them away again before our conscious can get the best of us. And then, without warning, we finish the entire season and have nothing new to watch on DVD, and our internet gets a bit too finicky to allow a proper amount of dawdling, and those unfinished projects somehow leap into view, ready to greet the world.

Right?

Well, I just couldn't seem to hold these two back any longer, and so now, World, I'm afraid I must introduce you to a set of Alice stationery and an Egocentric System embroidery pattern. I'll try to procrastinate better next time.

Ex Libris Ghostie

Is it just me, or are some authors able to reach well beyond the boundaries of space and time to speak to me? Magical!

I made this little painting a while ago (like, seriously, a long while ago) but completely forgot to share it. Just so I didn't feel like I was simply riding on former-space-time-continuum Cate (been watching too much Star Trek, perhaps), I'm only blogging it here now because I'm reworking it as an embroidery.

I'm so happy to have come to the craft of embroidery. It's such a perfect medium for me, and it's only getting better. I enjoy going through older works that didn't quite turn out the way I'd envisioned and then perfecting them in thread. I feel like I've come home every time I stitch.

If you're interested in stitching your own Ex Libris Ghostie, she's a part of my latest embroidery pattern set.

Feeling Nostalgic

While looking through an old sketchbook for a drawing of a cat that I just know is in there somewhere, I came across a couple of sketches of artsy St. Louis friends I'd done years ago. Thought I'd share.

(This was one of those blind portraits. I promise this isn't what I really think you look like, David!)

When it rains, it pours.

When I saw the theme for this week's Spoonflower Fabric of the Week contest was "Rain," I couldn't resist. It's been raining non-stop for months here (as is typical of Portland), and I'm always up for the challenge of making the rain seem more cheerful.

I modified an illustration I did for Valentine's Day into this fabric design:

You can vote for this design at Spoonflower's contest page. Be sure to check out all the other lovely designs as well. As usual, there are some truly amazing designs to be seen.

A Cowboy?

I periodically skim through my sketchbook for inspiration. Today I found this little guy. It's hard to put myself back in the mindset from some of my sketches, but you can tell by the exclamation point just how excited I was about this cowboy hat creature. Sigh.

Triple Scoop

To give my poor fingers a break from stitching, I turned my attention today to fabric design. I've been playing with a lot of my old illustrations to create repeating patterns, and today's pattern is Triple Scoop. I can't wait to think up just the right project to use this design. Pillowcases, maybe?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kitty Dot Redux