Take Flight - An Art Doll Cat

Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. Around 2 years ago I took an Artful Gathering class on line with the very inspiring Mary Jane Chadbourne. Named 'The Imaginarium, the anthology of an art doll', the class was a wonderful opportunity to learn all kinds of collage and mixed media techniques while creating free-standing art dolls. Now Mary Jane is running an encore class at Artful Gathering for students who might have missed it the first time around. Inspired by Mary Jane's beautiful wooden kits, I learned to cut my own wood shapes from our children's old bunk beds. Although I'm not on this current class, I wanted to re-visit the doll idea, but this time to explore some animal characters. Here is my first creation in memory of our cat, Daisy who we had to bid farewell earlier this year.

As Mary Jane will be teaching this class, I won't give step by step instructions on how I made an art doll. I would urge you to take one of Mary Jane's classes if you can. I would also like to tell you a little about the cat who inspired this creation. Daisy meant so much to all our family. She was the gentlest of cats, always there to offer us comfort. She was a good listener, the perfect, counsellor - always there for us through good times and tough times . Just stroking that little ginger head and hearing that extra loud purr helped get all our worries into perspective.

And in all the sixteen years we had her, Daisy never harmed a single bird. She would sit in a spot of garden sunlight and listen to birdsong without even a flick of her tail.

Now some might say this was laziness, but we preferred to see Daisy as a peace-loving feline. We reckoned she was the darling of the local bird population.

They certainly flocked happily to the bird-feeders without fear.

Daisy seemed as enchanted by bird-song as we were and she would lie on the grass with her eyes closed in ecstasy. We wondered if she ever dreamed of a world in which cats flew on tiny golden wings.

Daisy's last resting place was in the garden she loved. Both our children had taken the day off work to be there to say 'Goodbye' and as we lowered her tiny body into the earth the birds gathered in the trees around and seemed to be singing her a special hymn. 

Thank You so much for stopping by today and taking the time to look at my homage to a beloved pet. I wish you a lovely, creative week.