Anatomy of a Scruffy Boy {CSI Case File No. 66}

We have a new Case File open for investigation at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration, and it's a fun one! All of our April Case Files will be FUN because April is National Humor Month!

Here is my page. My sweet kitty Little Brent is getting so old and is looking a little rough around the edges these days. I call him my scruffy boy. I loved The Scene in our Case File and knew I was going to try to imitate it and document all the quirky little things about my sweet boy at this stage of his life. The image I had in my head didn't quite translate onto my page, as often happens with me, but I'm glad to have this layout for my books.

Clues I used...Evidence: Buttons, arrows, hearts, plaid/checks, ribbon, white background, holes, draw/doodle; Testimony: "Anatomy of...", Document a pet, handwrite your journaling.

Here are some details.The striped paper is by Simple Stories. As I was looking for some buttons, I discovered this puffy gingham heart that matched the ribbon I was planning on using. I chose the little scalloped border punch because it had holes in the scallops--for that part of the Evidence.

I do not like my handwriting, but felt compelled to use it here. It all looked too plain and ugly, so I decided to make those circles to jazz it up. I used a circle template and red stamp ink and just rubbed it over a circle and then overlapped a gray circle. Then I outlined them with a .005 fine line pen. It still looked plain, and that's when I decided I'd stitch lines under the words. I didn't want to have to keep cutting and starting new bits of thread, so I left the thread attached an moved my paper to stitch the next line. In the end, I decided not to trim off the stray thread because it gave my page a scruffy look, like my scruffy boy.

I swear, my cat has the biggest pink lips. I call him Mick Jagger sometimes on account of that. And he has these sweet black patches on his elbows.

I had that little unused rub-on crown sitting on my scrap table leftover from the last layout I had made and popped it on his head at the last minute. Looks kind of goofy, but then so does my whole page.  I used lots of old paper scraps--don't even know who makes them--and some vellum--been using that a lot lately.

Letters are by Lily Bee Design, and the chevron arrow stamp is a hand-carved stamp I got for Christmas from my sister (it's by Creatiate on etsy.) My boy has four black toe pads on all four of his paws, and one pink one on each. So cute!

Come see how the rest of the design team and guest designers solved this Case File. Really cool stuff! And we have a new sponsor this month--Citrus Twist Kits--with a really cool kit up for grabs. Come play with us!