3D Thursday: travelling light

Today I have 3 tiny little suitcases. They are made with Tonic Studio’s King’s Cross dies. Naughtily, Tonic omitted the apostrophe on the packaging. I think this could therefore mean the monarch is having a hissy fit instead…. I used a sheet of yellow gingham to brighten the day for one of them and some old Kanban printed cardstock for the others.

They are pretty easy to do – just a bit fiddly getting one side to close into the other as the are both the same size. The extra bits and pieces to decorate them are fun, and the corner bracket thingies were vital for me as I struggle to get a really good finish trying to shape a curve, so they hide the carnage nicely. They are 10 x 2.5 x 6cm, so good for small gifts, favours, gift cards etc, but definitely no heavy luggage!

 

Travelling light is exactly what we had to do at Christmas, as Riley (the cat) was going on a long train journey for the first time, and carrying a wriggly cat is not the most practical way to travel. I won’t bore you with all the details, just the funniest bit. We were staying with family and basically I think we blew Riley‘s furry mind, briefly. Mum, sister and BIL have three cats between them already, so Riley was given my mum’s bedroom as his ‘safe place’. Early signs were promising as he seemed to be willing to leave the room and explore a bit on the second day. Although it was a few inches at a time, then back to the safety of under the bed, briefly, to then try again. I should explain here that the house has a flight of stairs, then a bedroom off to the left and living room to the right. For some reason (probably to do with the age of the house – it is a couple of hundred years old) there is an additional step up to floor level on each side once you reach the top of the stairs. So you arrive at the landing level, then turn either left or right and step up one more time to continue. I hope this makes sense?! Now the level that Riley’s room was on also has an area between the stairwell and the living room leading to the stairs to the next level of the house. Still with me? Good.

So, Christmas Eve, bed time. Riley decides it is time to channel his inner Christopher Columbus and go exploring. He makes it out of the bedroom, and oh-so-fleetingly across the stairwell and into the living room he had been eyeing up from a distance for a day or so. Then, panic, and he scooted back to the bedroom. But, he went for it again! I was so proud. Briefly. Alas he got it wrong, didn’t make it as far as the living room and instead tore around the corner and off up the stairs to where sister and BIL had, I thought, gone to bed.

Now, the layout of rooms and the location of the stairs and the superfluous steps is EXACTLY the same on this top floor. So Riley headed for the ‘bedroom of safety’, only to realise it was not the room he anticipated. So he shot across the gap at the top of the stairs and into the living room opposite. But, of course, this was not the room he expected or had familiarised himself with either!

Any proud cat owner would hope that their furry charge would realise the error, remember the stairs and slink back down to familiarity. Right? Well, sadly my friends that did not happen. Riley just shot repeatedly from bedroom to living room, vaulting the stair gap like a gazelle fleeing a crocodile. Each time he found himself in the ‘wrong room’ he froze, turned and legged it out again at speed. We realised what was happening after about the sixth time, and, well an intervention was staged. I never knew I could catch a speeding cat in mid-air so cleanly. Maybe this should be my Olympic event?