Tuesday, August 6, 2019

My Battle With a Trash Panda + A Big Sale

I have pages and pages of blog posts I've written about my sweet and sour relationship with raccoons.

Objectively, I love them, both in real life and in stamp form. Subjectively, I am in a literal war with the little trash pandas.

Literally over the trash.

Raccoons LOVE trash. Especially trash with the remnants of cat food in it, as I explained here.

For a while, we had a bit of a reprieve from this activity. As I've told you, I've often caught people relocating coons to our nearby park in the wee hours of the morning on my walks. So it's possible that one of my neighbors relo'd the wily beast that had been eating our trash, messily, on the top of our recycle bin. Or maybe packs of coons are nomadic and roam around a large territory like adorable, furry gangs.

The little bugger lifts the fairly heavy lid of the trashcan, digs around inside the dark can, ripping open bags and getting snacks, and then somehow both carries the snacks and extricates himself from the can, and uses the top of my recycle bin like some rockstars use hotel rooms. The end result is quite disgusting.

So we've had to go back to rigging up our trashcan to keep them out. This is a real pain in the butt when you need to take out the trash, but for now, it's working. And the idea of keeping hot garbage in the garage is NOT on the table, so just suppress that idea - it's a terrible one.

But then, when I catch a glimpse of one on TV or in our neighborhood, all my trash rage subsides, because they are supremely adorable critters.

And I cannot resist any raccoon stamps, any more than I can resist squirrel stamps, which are similarly adorable and annoying.

So when the latest Cuddlebug stamp was a trash panda, it had to come live with me. And y'all - IT'S HALF OFF RIGHT NOW! They have a great sale going, and there are some beautiful Christmas images on sale too - you can see the whole sale here. All the Cuddlebugs are also on sale! I love the artist who creates this line. Right up my alley. The alley with the trashcan/raccoon chow box in it. :)

The video for the background is below, but all I did to color this little cutie was to google raccoons and use the warm grey Copics to try to get him colored in a realistic way. The sentiment is from the same stamp set. The background is for Lee's Dare to Get Dirty challenge.

The background was created with Radiant Watercolor (colors listed below), and these magical bleach crystals! I discovered this awesome form of bleach after Hurricane Harvey when I was mailing packages to the affected area in Houston with cleanup materials. These are a light, amazing form of bleach that you can't spill on your jeans! But - if you're coming into this house as a supply, you will end up in the craft room at some point, and so I did a very thorough experiment with this with several mediums, as well as two other texture ingredients you'll see in the video.
Cuddlebug Raccoon - Unity Stamp Company
[ UNT ]
Circle Infinity Dies (H)
[ HA ]
Iris Blue
[ BLIC ]
Peacock Blue
[ BLIC ]
Crimson
[ BLIC ]
Raspberry
[ BLIC ]
Fuchsia
[ BLIC ]
Amazon.com: Clorox Zero Splash Bleach...
[ AMZUS ]
Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors
[ BLIC ]
Mermaid tidy towel case and glue...
[ ETS ]
Sakura CLASSIC WHITE Fine Line 05...
[ SSS ]
Art Anthology BIG CRAFT MAT 24x36 311473
[ SSS ]
Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- White
[ GNK ]
MISTI Stamping Tool
[ MSP | HA | SSS | ELH | MFT | UNT ]
Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -...
[ BLIC ]
LightView 2in1 LED Magnifier for...
[ BRG ]
Xyron ADHESIVE ERASER 23675
[ SSS | ART | AMZUS ]
Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC
[ ELH | SSS ]
Crafter's Companion GEMINI...
[ SSS ]
Cut Align
[ MSP ]
Die Storage - Clear Storage Pockets...
[ CHC ]
XL Stamp Storage Pockets
[ ELH ]
Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045
[ SSS | CST | SSS | ELH | ART ]
Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies
[ ART ]
Sale - Page 1 - Unity Stamp Company
[ UNT ]
VersaFine Clair Ink Pad, Nocturne -...
[ ELH | SSS ]
Escoda Versatil Brushes, Travel Round...
[ UTR | BLIC | INK ]
Fabriano Extra White Cold Press...
[ BLIC ]
Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two...
[ SSS | MFT ]


So here's the video, where I explore a few different ways to get texture effects in watercolor - I hope you enjoy it! :) Loveyameanitbye.

4 comments:

  1. It would be hard to be mad at this little guy.
    I'd probably run in and get him some more food.
    Cute card. thanks for sharing
    txmlhl(at)yahoo(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  2. We had a family of raccoons living in a tree next door. The new owner had the trees cut down (he didn't know about the raccoons) . They used to roam the neighborhood together. I only see one now and he/she comes by about every three days. He comes to our back deck and irritates Lucy. They are extremely intelligent, as soon as he hears me scooping, he goes down off the deck and waits for me to drop the food down to him. I love this video! The backgrounds are amazing! I use those gel packets in my jewelry box, it helps keep the silver from tarnishing. I just love the salt effects, but now I need the bleach crystals!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I was a kid, we had an elderly neighbor. She wasn't the kind, grandmotherly type. She liked my parents... and she tolerated us kids. But... once in a great while, she'd have us over. Apparently every night she fed the raccoons. I know it's not PC, but it was so much fun. They LOVED marshmallows, so we'd hold the marshmallows in our hands. We knew they were dangerous, so we'd just crack open the sliding glass door and hold them out. And the raccoons (which are HUGE in California) would come take them from us with their cute little raccoon hands.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've been throwing out my silica packets all these years! (And we had a little scare a couple of years ago when we though our dog may have gotten into one) I also just learned of a new use for them yesterday! You can color them with alcohol inks and add them to your shaker cards - with or without sequins. I guess I need to start saving them! (Does that mean I need to go shoe shopping?)

    ReplyDelete

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