Spring Tees in the Shop

We're a week away from the official start of Spring 2012 but it's already feeling like it's begun.  I've got lots of new tees in the shop, and some old ones restocked.  Hop on over and have a look!

Back to Business...

... mostly. My shop is open again and I will be adding some new things to it...
very gradually.

The tee above is now available here. I've only been staring at it when I'm at my computer for the past three months or so, but simply didn't get around to listing it until the other day.

That seems to be the case around here a lot lately, but I have to remind myself that being a mom is a full-time job in itself. Plus, how can I resist spending time with this cutie?

(If only she were this calm all the time)

Ciao for now.

edit: I forgot to say thank you for all the sweet comments left on my previous post re: our new addition. Whitney says thank you, too :)

The Big Reveal

Life has been pretty hectic these past several weeks, as my due date nears...
• Baby and home furniture shopping
• a trip to the ER for my dear hubby
• maintaining my shop
• and working at my part-time job
So blogging was not exactly a priority. And I'm sure it will be put on the back burner once our little one arrives too.

But I'm happy to finally share the results of last month's hard labour and home reno project.




There are still some finishing touches that the shoji doors require to make them easier to open and close, but for the most part they are done and function fine.

Of course, some repairs are needed as well...

c/o our bad kitty, Suki.

And we need to start training the cats to stay out of the bedroom, as well as preparing them for the arrival of their little sister. That will be a task and a half. We are hoping for the best!

More pics to come in the next few weeks of our revamped home. Ciao for now.

Hello Weekend!

Matt emailed me this image that he came across yesterday morning. I thought it was too cute not to share and it sets a light-hearted tone for the last weekend of the summer.

This week was semi-productive, but I never seem to get as much done as I would like. Things usually end up taking way longer than I estimate them to take.

My belly is definitely expanding quite easily these days. Sitting on my ass coupled with not leaving the house for a few days certainly helps its growth. All I can say is, thank goodness for drawstring pants.


Here's a peek at what I was working on for most of the latter part of this week.


I'd been toying with an owl and pussycat idea for some time now and it finally occurred to me to make a pattern out of the animal pair. Each critter will also be made into individual screens too and I'm excited to print them onto scarves, totes and other textiles.

I'm loving the new clever kitty, as I like to think of "her".

The owl took a bit more trial and error until I was finally satisfied with "him". Getting him to look as cute as the kitty was tricky, but I think they look good together now.
Another nice online surprise I got yesterday morning was discovering that one of my items is currently in an etsy gift guide. I think that's the first time I've been featured in one, that I've known of anyways.

Hope everyone else had a great week and has a happy weekend! Bye for now.

September Giveaway

It's the 15th of September, which means a new giveaway is here! As promised, this month there will be 3 lucky winners, which means there are 3 different prizes.

The first prize pack includes a pirate kitty tote, a clever kitty moleskine journal - a new item to be introduced to the shop soon! - and your choice of bookmark. There are 6 different designs available. Total value = $35 US.


The second prize pack is for 2 of my prints - Thinking Capcat and The Bubblegum Gang. Total value = $30 US.


And last but not least, the third prize is for a set of Nine Lives magnets. Total value = $15 US.


Ways to enter: Visit my shop and come back here either telling me what your favourite item is or suggest something new that you would like to see me offer.

As usual, any purchases made in my shop from now until the end of the month will also get your name entered in the draw.

And my Happy Customers are automatically entered every month. To become one, simply send me a photo of you and your purchase and I can add it to the gallery or join my group on flickr.

For bonus entries: Become a follower of my blog (follow button to the left) and/or on twitter, then come back here and leave a comment letting me know that you did so. All my current blog followers are automatically entered. I have too many unknown twitter followers, so unfortunately you need to comment on this post to b entered.

If anyone has trouble leaving a comment, you can also email me: blog@cathypeng.com. I have found that in certain web browsers, I've been unable to comment.

Winners will be announced on the 1st of October!

Have fun and Happy Giveaway!

In with the New and Out with the Old

Several new apparel items are in the shop and there are a ton of tees on sale with more to be added soon!

Here are just a few:

clever kitty briefs

fancy kitty tee

lucky kitty tee

Remember, this month's giveaway will be announced tomorrow. Any purchases made between the 15th and 30th of this month will earn you an entry into the draw. And of course, commenting on my blog will do so too. That's all for now. Until tomorrow!

Making Room for Baby & Shop Stuff

That's a bit of what I've been up to recently. Since we live in a loft, the open concept requires a bit more planning for a baby and we've been racking our brains on how to divide up the space. Right now we only have these curtains as a room divider.
I am leaning towards enclosing our bedroom to keep the cats out - where baby will sleep for the first year, most likely - but whatever we put up has to still let light in, be relatively lightweight but sturdy, be easy to install and affordable! Yeah, wishful thinking. Matt wants to build shoji screen sliding doors himself - I took out the book below from the library for him - but without a proper workshop and tools, I'm wondering how easy this diy project will be. Those of course would be ideal (except who knows how they would hold up with the cats loving to scratch wood?). We've got less than 4 months to come up with a solution.

{Oh yeah, we found out it's going to be a girl!

I've kind of just been savouring the news and telling a handful of people so far. We'll see if the results hold up, since I've already had my share of surprises with the pregnancy so far}

We've been making room for our new addition in there over the past several months and finally acquired a lovely new dresser for all of us on our last trip to Ikea.


Most of my clothes have made their way onto the other side of our bedroom and I am badly wanting to finish my walk-in closet plan for them, since it is kind of a sight for sore eyes at the moment.

The Stolmen system from Ikea is what I have in mind for our personal clothing and also for my shop stock, as it works well in places with high ceilings. So I'm on craigslist daily searching for that and numerous other Ikea pieces at reasonable prices.


And speaking of making room for baby, unintentionally, this past week we had to throw out almost everything we had stored in our building's basement storage locker, due to our own and someone else's ignorance. Apparently every time it rains - and this summer has been a wet one for sure - the basement in our building tends to flood. We only found this out recently. Well, combine that with someone not speaking up about a broken pipe in her storage locker and our choice to store stuff in cardboard boxes, and you get damaged goods. Plus, since we didn't try to salvage things right away, mold started accumulating and for our safety and our baby's safety, we - well, Matt mostly because I shouldn't be moving heavy things right now - had to toss out everything that we thought had been contaminated and wasn't utterly important.

That included all of his childhood mementos, albums, artwork and his most prized toy, a stuffed rabbit - his mom had gathered it all to give to him when she and his dad moved out east several years back. For me, I had to let go of a box full of old journals and sketchbooks, which had me a bit ill at ease. I don't want to imagine someone else reading those or going through my personal things. But oh well, if that stuff had meant such a great deal to us, we probably wouldn't have put them down in storage. That's what I've tried to tell myself.

As well as rearranging stuff in our home, I tried out the new rearrange shop feature on etsy the other day and colour coded all my items. I don't know why, but I tend to do that with things. My clothes are like that and when I had my own section for clothing in stores, I would do that. Our bookshelves are like that too.

Right now, red is on the first page. I will change that up probably every so often. At least you can still change the view to select "most recently listed".


Other than that, I've been pretty busy screen printing for others and getting together my own Fall stock to send out to various shops. This is one of the images I printed, which is also one of my favourite new ones available through Oddbird Designs.


I'm also working on a new design featuring an owl - yes, not just a puttytat! - and will hopefully have it ready to unveil and print in a week or so. And I've got a new custom portrait keeping me busy too, which I'll post about another day. So all in all, pretty busy and happy for it.

This month's giveaway will be another good one, with 3 different winners chosen, so be sure to check back on the 15th!

And the Winner is...

I made the draw for the August blog giveaway earlier this afternoon. And the lucky winner is Sarah! Thanks to all who entered last month. It started out a bit slow, but in the end there were 60-some entries. I loved hearing about your favourite summer movies and will have to check out the ones I haven't yet seen.

Remember, giveaways are on a monthly basis and a guaranteed way to enter is simply by becoming one of my blog followers or by joining my Happy Customers gallery on flickr!

The latest items to hit the shop are pictured below:

moustache kitty on pink & brown

moustache kitty on teal & brown

Moustache Kitty undies!
These have been in the works for some time but I only got around to printing them this past weekend.

And here's a sneak peek of what else will be added to the shop very soon. Still some finishing touches needed to make these all the more special. Check back in a week or two.

New Shop Items

Finally listed a few new tees in the shop. More things are coming and I will hopefully get around to adding them sometime next week.

Clever Kitty Boatneck

Light Aqua Hi Kitty Shirred Front Tee

I'm meeting Matt for lunch soon - my hard working hubby who was asked to work on the weekend - so I'll say Ciao for now!

Under the Weather

I'm feeling under the weather today. Yesterday was worse. Matt was sick last week and so were some people who I work with here, so I think it finally caught up with me. Bah!

A new tee is in the shop though. More to come soon.

Thanks to Alexis and Julie for your sweet comments on my last post. I tried to reply but blogger sometimes acts up and doesn't let me leave comments.

New Stationery Set Unveiled

The stationery set I was working on last week is now available in my shop. Yes, it's Hi Kitty again. As with most of my kitty designs, they eventually end up on anything and everything that I can make. I had the idea for this churning in my head for a while and finally stopped thinking so much and just did it this past week. I'm quite happy with how it turned out but because there was more work involved than usual - you get 20 handcut stickers - the price is a bit higher than the other stationery sets I currently offer.

Here are some more photos:











Today is a holiday in Canada, the ultimate long weekend for a lot of people (May 2-4). That is, a lot of people not including us.

Yeah, we rock.

We did see the Star Trek movie on Saturday - Matt's treat - and surprisingly I enjoyed it considering I was never a Trekkie. I did watch the older Star Trek series from time to time and I even vaguely recall us owning a toy model of the Starship Enterprise.

It must have been my dad who bought it.

The actor who played James T. Kirk carried the movie really well though, and he's pretty easy on the eyes too. So ladies, if your man is wanting to take you to see this flick, I'd recommend it. :)

Happy Monday!

New Prints & Tees in the Shop!

Feeling tired today, so this post will be light on words but heavy on pictures...
There are new things in the shop. Go have a peek!

April Showers, Indeed!

April's here and I'm wondering, will the rain ever stop? I need to get me some red wellies anyway.

Well, as predicted, I did not get a chance to blog last week. It was mostly work that kept me busy, but some play was involved too. Basically I worked (outside of the house) from Monday to Sunday, so by the time I got home, all I wanted to do was veg... I mean, relax.

I helped out this sweet friend again at the One of a Kind Show. Although it was quite a bit slower on the first few days - due in part to the "two R's", rain and recession - things picked up on the weekend and I think it was another successful show for Candice. Her tanks and dresses sold like hot cakes and I'm thrilled that I'll be getting my hands on one too in the near future. My fingers are crossed that she can find the same fabric again.

I am finally considering applying for the Christmas show myself. We'll see if I get in. I spotted someone wearing one of my clever kitty tees on my way out of the show the other night, so that was a little confidence booster.

There are a few new things in the shop:

Nine Lives Version 2 Magnet Set

Fancy Felines Button Set


And I updated most ofmy website finally. The individual product pages still need to be updated but everything else is pretty much current. Yay!

Later this week I'll share with you my new home decorating related obsession.

New in the Shop!

The shop has been updated!
Hurrah!

Please folks, don't all clamour to it at once.

Sarcasm aside, these are among my favourites of the new items added. There was supposed to be more, but seeing as how this was my first time making them, a few didn't turn out to my perfectionist liking. And it was a slow process, I tell ya!

I will be making more in the coming weeks (perhaps, months), but my supplies are limited, so once I run out, that'll be it. At least for this type of jewelry. Glass tiles are so prevalent on etsy that I'd like to offer something a little more unique.

Also new in the shop are undies! You can find them here.
I've been making these and selling them in various retail shops for a while but had never before offered them online. We'll see how they sell.

Other new items include change purses, totes and tees, a few of which are pictured below:



I think I've spent the whole weekend indoors. Shame on me, I know, seeing as how it's now officially Spring. So I'll bid you adieu and wish you a good night! Until next week!