The Making of a Fur-lebrity: Meet Angelina (Meow-y) Jolie

Did you know Natioanl Hairball Awareness Day is April 27th? Our friends at Furminator want to remind everyone about the importance of keeping your pets groomed, not only to alleviate nasty hairballs, but to encourage bonding between cats and their guardians and to help keep your cat feeling comfortable. Mats on any animal are painful. As they get bigger and thicker, they pull on the skin making every step uncomfortable, then cause infections and bleeding. I'll discuss Furminator's de-shedding tools and some grooming tips in another post. For now let's focus on the strange and bizarre (my favorite!) request the Furminator folks asked of me.

A select number of cat bloggers were invited to create, what I call a “Fur-lebrity” (celebrity look-alike) out of cat fur! Sound insane? Yes, I'd say so! The rules were simple, groom your cat and use the fur and whatever else you need for your creation. Who you create is up to you.

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. My fur-lection of cat fur.

I do not consider myself to be crafty, but I did go to art school so I had some hope I could pull this off.

With a $1000.00 donation to my favorite charity (Kitten Associates, YAY!) on the line as First Prize for the best entry, I knew I had to really kick some butt.

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. Gathering some tools I think might help.

Who would I try to create? I immediately thought of Jackson Galaxy, but then realized I had no way to recreate his brilliant tattoos. I wanted to do someone who is easily recognizable-then it hit me-I would re-create Angelina Jolie's newsworthy leg flash at the 2012 Academy Awards. It went viral in seconds. Her LEG got it's own Twitter page, followed by the creation of a MEME showing classic images with her leg added to them. If you haven't seen it, you can look HERE.

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. We have fur. We have photo. Now what do we do?

I had NO clue how I was going to pull this off. I did research and gathered images. I called my friend, Irene and asked her to help. We both got to work brushing our numerous cats and made plans to get together for a planning session. Was I overthinking this? Yes! But I REALLY want that First Prize donation!

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. Felting the fur, then making a curl. COOL! I can do this!

My shorthairs really shed like crazy and I got a TON of fur off of them. Pee-tunia loved being brushed. I must have brushed her for 30 minutes and I could have kept going her fur is so dense! Because it's so dry this time of year, static electricity built up and I wore almost as much fur as I removed from my cat.

The longhaired cats didn't contribute much, but their fur was softer and easy to work with, especially the DOOD's.

I bagged each cat's fur separately since I'm anal retentive, plus I thought if we had to dye the fur we'd know how much we had up front. Heck, I could always get more as long as didn't make my cats bald.

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. The LEG. I think Angie is gonna have to shave it!

Irene and I spent many hours working, scratching our heads, making weird faces, feeling confused. We went to a craft store and found lots of goodies that inspired us to keep going.

After we'd found lovely little detail items, we really got to work. Felting cat fur is fairly easy, you just rub it into the shape you want and it stays that way. Irene and I were both covered in cat hair as we worked. We tested, ripped apart, started over. We got Angelina's dress sorted out and I thought it looked spot on. We even got the pleats correct. I started to get into making every little thing I could think of. I made her a little purse, adding earrings and a ring. I even added strips of gray fur to suggest her tattoos. She has one on the inside of her right arm and the longitude and latitude of where her children were born tattooed on her left arm (to cover a tattoo she got of her ex, Billy Bob Thornton's name).

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. The gown is lookin' fine!

We kept looking at our reference images. I kept asking myself if there was enough fur being used? How creepy is her face if we SEW on her features? Yes, it's creepy, but just using a doll face seemed like cheating. Irene and I kept looking at each's others contributions. I did the leg, she did the face. I made curls. She sewed the dress once I got the fabric pinned. All said and done, we were really happy with the finished Fur-Lebrity. We even found sparkly red paper we could use for the Red Carpet.

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. Angelina Meow-y.

Before I photographed our entry, I had to use a LINT ROLLER to get the cat fur OFF part of the gown! Seemed a bit ironic to need to do that.

If we're one of the FIVE lucky FINALISTS---WAIT SCRATCH THAT! BREAKING NEWS: WE ARE ONE OF THE FINALISTS SO I HOPE YOU'LL GO TO the FURMINATOR FACEBOOK PAGE AND VOTE FOR US! We just took in a mama and six kittens so that money can go to providing for all their upcoming Vet care and we can help the other cats in our Program like King, Miss Fluffy Pants & Bobette!

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. What a cute couple!

Then Irene's niece, Chris sent us a surprise! She created a spectacular Jackson Galaxy! Now I had a problem-we could only enter ONE Fur-lebrity! I felt like I was in a warped version of Sophie's Choice!It was a very difficult decision, but in the end, I went with Angelina. I sure hope Jackson doesn't feel betrayed!

©2012 Robin A.F. Olson. Don't be mad at us, Jackson! You know we love you!

If you'd like to see the other entries, just click on the badge, above. I'm going to go vacuum up some cat hair.