Son of For Love Not Money part 3

Been an incredibly busy week at my various jobs, keeping me out of the Studio. I wasn't given a definite deadline for finishing this postcard, but I have to think Eileen needs it as soon as possible, so I gave it a bit of thought whenever I had a spare moment. I even brought some other opinions in on the process. I showed the original to a co-worker at my day job, someone who has an arts background. At first she had no idea what to make of the image. When I told her that one of my associations for the checkerboard pattern was a tile floor, something finally clicked. She suggested that the tea bags were on the floor, having missed landing in a nearby kitchen garbage can. Sharing the floor, a dog bowl, if not the dog itself, and maybe a bit of other furniture. I liked the idea of a pet as a reinforcement of the "for love not money" concept, not obvious from the tea bags themselves if you don't know the back story.

I thought it was a promising idea, though I changed the dog to a cat. Anyone who knows me knows I am more a dog person than a cat person, but these days I have more direct exposure to cats (my parents' cats make regular visits to my house) and I could see the mysterious objects at the center of the composition as something that would attract their curiosity. I made some photocopies of the card to sketch on. Above is one of the early versions- a cat/kitten above and to the left of the tea bags, a garbage can (foot pedal operated) to the right, and a pet food dish up top between them.

Today I brought this to the Studio. I prepared a small block of wood, and set it aside. Next I took one of the photocopies and traced the reversed image on the back. Over this I pencilled another version of the same combination of cat, food dish, and garbage can, shown immediately above.

I transfered the tea bag part of the design to the wood and sketched them in. Not quite sure which side I wanted the cat on, I put one on each side, as seen below. Having seen that, I am now considering leaving both cats in and maybe skipping the other stuff. I'll sleep on it, make a decision tomorrow, and get cutting.