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Recently, while running the #CardboardCatsChallenge, a memory came back to me that I'd completely forgotten about.
We're going all the way back to 1993, when I was a kid. This isn't the original artwork, because that's almost certainly been lost over the years, but a recreation made from memory.
For a year or so, my specialist subject was puppets.
Maybe it was after seeing films like Labyrinth and The NeverEnding Story, or maybe it was Sooty and Sweep, Edd the Duck or Roland Rat. Who knows. Whatever caused it, I became properly obsessed.
Hand puppets, sock puppets, string puppets, marionettes. Some highlights were them wiggly blue worms on invisible string. I had a couple of Bubbaloo Birds too, or at least knock-offs of them.
But the best bit was always making my own.
I remember either learning from other kids, or maybe at school, how to make those paper chatterbox / fortune teller things. I never really understood the game itself, but I loved the shape. Somewhere along the way I realised that if you turned one sideways and opened it up, it looked like a little animal with a mouth.
So I spent ages turning them into puppets instead. Cats, dogs, monsters, all sorts. I think I actually called them "little monsters". I'd draw faces on them, add ears, colour them in, and spend hours making tiny paper creatures.
They're almost certainly long gone now, probably binned decades ago, but I can still remember making them.
When I got home the other evening, that memory was still rattling around in my head, so I sat down, relearned all the folds, and recreated one from memory.
This time it's a little black Harrowden cat, but it's basically the same idea I was playing with back in 1993.
Looking back, it's funny how some ideas never really leave you. I spend a lot of time making paintings, digital art and all sorts of other things now, but I still seem to enjoy taking bits of paper, cardboard and whatever else I can find, and trying to turn them into little creatures.
Maybe not much has changed after all. 🖤🐈