Portraits of Animals

I created a silhouette from Bella and stenciled it in onto a canvas or twill bag and embellished with buttons sewn on by hand. Scroll down to see the full color selections.

[ss_product id=’94b1571c-3f32-11e7-a40c-002590785994′ ]Handmade Tote Bag, Bella![/ss_product]

Original Bella! Tote Bag with the black kitty silhouette

O.M.Geeeee! It’s Bella! On a bag with green button eyes just like her big round eyes! Bella, in silhouette, is stenciled at the bottom of a bag and with just big blue-green eyes that are two-hole buttons sewn on with black thread.

Based on one of my sketches of Bella from shortly after she arrived here simply called “Bella”, I pulled out the scan of the little painting and refined the design in Photoshop. Bella’s eyes are not yellow green, they are a cooler blue-green, and I found pretty close to a good color for her. Others don’t live in a house full of housepanthers, so I added the white, gray and ginger kitties who are her foster friends.

Bella! Tote bag.

The original bags and the artwork and stencil, and fellow rescuer Deana modeling the first bag purchased!

White kitty with blue eyes on a natural bag

The white kitty has bright blue eyes.

Gray kitty with green eyes on a natural bag

The gray kitty has the same shade of green as Bella’s eyes.

Ginger kitty with green eyes on a natural bag

The ginger kitty has bright green eyes.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

The bag is 12″ x 12″ x 7″, lined with thin clear vinyl and holds its shape well, as you can see in the photo, imprinted on the front. Handles are sturdy plastic coated cord covered with jute.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

G. Print only, black and white

This linoleum block print captures a leopard I saw at the zoo, turning around with quite the question on her face. I so loved the spots that showed up so clearly in my photos so I decided to just print the spots. The art size is 10″W x 8″H.

Block printing is a technique wherein the artist carves the surface of a piece of linoleum, leaving raised areas which will become the image. Ink is rolled onto these raised areas, then a piece of paper is pressed against the block and when it’s lifted away the ink remains, leaving the image on the paper.

I also offer this print without color, as a print alone, and matted and framed in my Wildlife Linoleum Blocks Print gallery, as well as on t-shirts and sweat shirts.

Find similar products

Tote Bags

Wildlife Linoleum Block Prints

Feline Linoleum Block Prints

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

Ailurobibliophile tote bag is screen printed by me in black ink onto a canvas tote bag. Bags may vary slightly in size, but are just about 13.5″ x 13.5″.

(I am posting this for pre-order using the photos of my stenciled design and some photos from printing them. They need to dry a little before I can fool around with photographing them.)

About the artwork

Ailurobibliophile tote bag

Ailurobibliophile bags in colors.

In the photo above, the first bag is definitely a nice sky blue. Once they dry a bit more and I can take them outside into natural light to photograph them I’ll get good closeups of all three colors. And any others I find!

I’m working out a design I’ve had in mind for a while—since just about a year ago to be exact! This was to be September 2017’s new introduction, starting with a tote bag then possibly moving to other things, and the concept would lead to a line of items with this design and others, using photos as well as art. This stencil isn’t ready for prime time—in fact, stenciling is just not going to work for this—but I have a plan for that. It’s the idea that counts!

About that word, “Ailurobibliophile”. Yes, I made it up. It popped up in my design consciousness about a decade ago when I was photographing my cats in the cat book library, on the books, in the books, napping, bathing, posing, and I held it there until I had such time to really work it out. Finally, I can let the world know about “ailurobibliophiles”!

What does it mean? Just what it says. My initial idea was just “lover of cats and books”. Then I photographed Basil last August 2017…

Basil Will Be Reading

…and knew the time had come. This was why it was to be introduced last September, back-to-school, that sort of thing.

As with all my designs, this one is based on a real cat, a cat you know, a cat just being a cat. Just after my Panhandle Trail show last August I started playing around with this photo and others I’d taken that morning at my desk. What I’d really like is to simply screen print it, but adding one more element to my studio in terms of materials and equipment and I’d be falling out the window. I decided I would be stenciling this design to start, much as I dislike stenciling more than a word or two of text, so it had to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of stenciling. That would mean that the area “inside” a letter, for instance, needed a cutout to connect it to the greater background of the stencil or I’d end up with all the “a”s and “o”s and others filled in. It also meant that things like Basil’s eyes would need to be done separately. I can demonstrate, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

I worked up a few designs, and in doing so found more fun things to add to the text because Basil was “on” the books, and several of the books were “on” cats. Likewise with my photos of cats in the cat book library, and I was just beside myself with the possibilities. I finally managed to edit it down to three statements so I didn’t go on and on.

I settled on one design for layout and used several text variations, then chose two that would work well for stenciling. I couldn’t decide, and I especially wanted to be certain the “new” word was understandable, and the text clarified it, and nothing made anyone think overly hard so it lost its fun and whimsy. I sent it out to several trusted friends for feedback.

We came around to spring when I’d intended to finish off the design and start printing and I had the feeling I had more work to do than it seemed. I really did want to work them out for my open house in July but had way too much work in getting my house ready. In August I played around with designing my little signs instead of working on this, and I’m not unhappy with that. Then came my Panhandle exhibit, and here we are.

And I was right, I had more work to do to get this ready to stencil. I spent some focused hours last night and most of today working it out. I knew it would take more time, but hadn’t anticipated all day, and that it’s cute, but not ready to go.

I preferred the heavier font. I think it balances Basil’s dark shape well. I added the little cuts into the closed letters and cut the stencil. It ended up having too many thin areas between the letters and inside the letters to print clearly so I decided to try my other option, which worked a little better. But I also fund that things like the stack of books would be very difficult to work with because all those white areas are little slivers of clear plastic material with just enough tacky adhesive to make them all stick together in a cluster like a sticky burr, and twist around. And all sorts of other things that made just getting the stencil set up very tedious and would eventually cause me to tear the stencil. So I worked out all the little details that were problems and came up with this final design.

The final Ailurobibliophile design.

You can see how I reworked the books so I didn’t have all the little plastic flaps, and also the little cuts in the letters. You can also see what happened with the text, fine in the large size, but it just didn’t work smaller. But I really like to see it on a tote bag. From a distance it looks great!

Ailurobibliophile on a tote bag.

All these little issues are cleared up with the screen. I can’t wait to share it!

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

I created a silhouette from Bella and stenciled it in onto a 7 oz. white cotton canvas and embellished with buttons sewn on by hand.

Bella! Accessory Bags in Housepanther and Ginger Kitty

I wasn’t sure the design would fit when I bought these, but she fit so well it was meant to be.

I found sets of these white cotton accessory bags on clearance—a good price for me to experiment with. This is the largest bag, 8.5″ x 5.5″, the other two are smaller and smaller yet and because this design won’t fit on those I have different plans.

I chose the two most popular kitty colors to stencil these, Housepanther, the original Bella! and Ginger Kitty. The bags are a sturdy 7 oz. cotton, enough that the fabric stencil ink didn’t bleed through. They zip across the top.

As I’d shared on Instagram and Facebook last Saturday, Mimi was threatening to step on my wet stencils if we didn’t go outside.

Mimi pawsonalizes a bag.

She rarely follows through with her threats, but you can see a little blip of orange above the ginger kitty’s shoulder area, so I said she’d “pawsonalized” this one. Friends said I should charge more for that one for Mimi’s work, but really it’s the same price as the housepanther model.

If these are popular I’ll print more in all the colors. If I print on these later it will be much easier to make them myself, unless I find a really big clearance. I guess we’ll see!

You’ll find them with Tote Bags

Original Bella! Tote Bag with the black kitty silhouette

O.M.Geeeee! It’s Bella! On a bag with green button eyes just like her big round eyes! Bella, in silhouette, is stenciled at the bottom of a bag and with just big blue-green eyes that are two-hole buttons sewn on with black thread.

Based on one of my sketches of Bella from shortly after she arrived here simply called “Bella”, I pulled out the scan of the little painting and refined the design in Photoshop. Bella’s eyes are not yellow green, they are a cooler blue-green, and I found pretty close to a good color for her. Others don’t live in a house full of housepanthers, so I added the white, gray and ginger kitties who are her foster friends.

Bella! Tote bag.

Find similar items

Also see the Bella! and her Foster Friends Tote Bags.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.