Holiday Story: Sisters Pay Homage to VMB (“the Gma”) with Red-Themed Holiday & Retro-Looking Cats
Category Is: Hello Kitty*
“The theme for the holidays next year will be red.” I informed my family last January. I knew that the Gma’s time was ending soon, and I planned a holiday tribute to one of my besties.
During Gma’s life, she regularly painted the town red. As a youth she acquired red hot pants, upsetting her dad to no end. She loved red lipstick and, naturally, when she started riding, her motorcycle was red.
I made her red Christmas stockings (two because we misplaced one one year so I had to compensate) and red table cloths. I sent her a Christmas package every year with various items: hard sweets, soap—Irish Springs only—magnets, pens, and one year an amazing retro cat clock with a swinging tail. (It was also red of course.)
As you can, it was easy to style this homage to the Gma via the obvious two major influences: stylized cats and red.
Although I’m not sure Gma has ever been introduced to Hello Kitty, I’m pretty sure she’d love it. I started my holiday decorating theme early—oh wait, back to the card story because that’s the topic here.^
I saved a large box and spray painted one side red. (The box was from a miniature armchair we acquired for the cats. Yes they use it. Yes, sometimes we use it when they take our seats.) I cut a hole in the center and surrounded it with red holiday bows (acquired either through attrition or thrifting).
The idea was to make a box frame through which we could entice the kitties to peer (adorably) and thus sneak photos of a holiday nature. We had seen similar things on the insta and it actually looked doable.
Phe Nails the Photoshoot
In a first in over 10 years, Phe nailed the photoshoot. Usually she is hard to catch in a pose near any holiday related thing. I tried holiday sweaters one year. She managed to not only remove the sweater but lose it somewhere where I didn’t find until a year later when I moved my bed (I could feel the smugness rolling off her).
I’ve tried bows and collars, both of which were hugely objectionable and rejected with great indignation nigh on paranoia of some hidden agenda.
This cardboard box window, however, through which one could get a snack—that worked. I made them practice a few evenings in a row, training them to get the snack through the hole. They had to be on the other side of the hole though to get it.
Amp, while generally seeing no reason to remain on the other side of the hole still managed to look fairly photogenic in the shots we did get.
Holiday Framed: The Humans
Now came the difficult party: getting pictures of the humans through the holiday frame.
Admittedly I have been somewhat obsessed with a new-ish hobby, the crochet. I determined that I would crochet Hello Kitty masks and that we would thus become kitty impersonators through the holiday frame. After weeks of work off and on, I came up with a satisfiable product, or rather two:
And after some experimentation, we had all the stills. I photoshopped the images, as per ush (as in usual), rebuilt portions of Amp’s frame (le sigh), and even created a slight color variation.
#Crochic
Here we are as kitty impersonators with our best felines.
I’m really happy with how these turned out and I’m dedicating this years’ card to the Gma. On holidays, we wear red.
*I realize that Hello Kitty is not retro, but the stylization is something that I think the Gma would like—would have liked for those of you that only live in the now.
^Our Christmas trees are also decorated with—you guessed it, Hello Kitty figurines and red ornaments.