Personalized Vinyl Sign: God's Cat Garden

Have you ever needed something for a spot in your home and haven’t been able to find the perfect thing to fit in that space? Consider creating a special art piece, using your Pazzles machine, a purchased piece of art and Pazzles vinyl.

The inspiration for my art work came from the location and the area around where I was placing it, specifically next to my patio doors, overlooking my back yard. Key components in my back yard are the “occupants”. I have the usual things in my area of the country-a palm tree, a swimming pool, hibiscus plants, bird of paradise plants, citrus trees and feral cats. I’ll explain about the cats, specifically, “God’s Cat Garden” a bit later.

A base to place the vinyl was required. I was unable to find the correctly sized unfinished piece at my local craft store. A pre-made framed sign, made of paneling with words etched in the surface was the correct size. The piece was on sale so I purchased it, planning to sand off the words and refinish it. After sanding off the original words, I used two shades of paint on the paneling base to create a distressed look and distress stain to antique the frame.

I searched the Pazzles Craft Room Library and found In the Garden title. I used the word Garden and the stem. The red flower from Floral Explosion design was used to mimic the brilliant hibiscus in my back yard. The Bird of Paradise Plant required just a little modification to fit my design idea. The Big Cat and Silhouette Cat set could be modified to suit my needs; it was easy to make them look like Fritz (big cat), Max (black cat) and Miss Piggy (black and white spotted cat) who are members of my cat garden. To create fluttering 3D butterflies, the Butterfly set was cut in 2 different vinyl colors and a cardstock base, which could be easily folded and glued to the wooden base. Using different fonts, of the same color is an effective way to create a unique title. With my wooden background having grooves, a review of the Move Point Scissors video reminded me how to separate the words with a quick snip of the second set of scissors. The same scissors were used to snip off the corners of the left ears of the cats, which will be explained later.

Working with vinyl can seem daunting and unfortunately, my experience with vinyl was quite limited. It is surprisingly easy to do, especially if you make tiny test cuts to establish the perfect settings. In my climate, a blade setting of 2, pressure 17 worked best and made the weeding process delightful. The Pazzles Transfer Tape is awesome, even removing and reapplying was accomplished when the spacing needed some adjusting. Layering the various flowers and cats was a snap using the transfer tape, the hardest part remembering the order of the layers. Sharpie markers were used to draw on the big cat’s face.

Why in the world would anyone have feral cats in their backyard? Our family has had cat family members for over 30 years. We were devastated when they had all passed, but decided we were done with indoor cats. Our children were grown, we were empty nesters and retirement was on the horizon. Decision made, with heavy hearts we looked to a future without a purry family member. Just a few months after we made this decision, we discovered four tiny, newborn kittens, peeking out of a cement block next to our garage. We carefully watched, the Mama returned, only to hide her babies around our yard. Trying to catch them was not successful, as handled feral cats could become tame cats. As the kittens grew larger, we learned of the TNR (trap, neuter, return) program in our area, began the feeding protocol and soon discovered we just didn’t have 5 cats, we had 15! A neighbor had been feeding some wild cats, but had never participated in the TNR program. We love cats, but we needed to take action before we had even more cats. Our family became the “cat trap” family, and over the next year we managed to trap, neuter and return all 15 cats in “God’s Cat Garden” colony. When the cats are neutered, a corner of their left ears are clipped, the universal sign that a cat has been neutered. Feral cats are often “working” cats, and in our area they keep roof rats and gophers out of a neighborhood, eat spiders and scorpions, and keep pigeons out of the pool. To monitor the cats, we continue to feed and name each cat in our little colony. We’ve grown quite attached to our little tribe. Feral cats don’t usually allow humans to touch them, nor do they meow or purr. Four of our little family purr and meow, three of them crave touch, coming to my patio doors to see if they can entice me to give them more treats or scratch their chins and pet them. Miss Piggy comes inside, sits on the rug by my back door, gets petted, chin and ears scratched and does tricks to get treats. In 30 years of having indoor cats, I could never train them to consistently do tricks, but Miss Piggy prefers to sit and have her treat served upon the top of her head. As a warning, it has taken almost 3 years for our cat garden to adopt us, so do not touch or play with feral cats, it can be very dangerous. I do highly recommend the TNR program if you have feral cats in your area.

The next time you need some inspiration for a home décor piece, look around your house and see if you can’t find something “InVue” that will inspire an artistic creation of your very own. You may find your own specialty garden in your own back yard!

~Sheri