My tacky yard sale find

Remember...if you haven't entered my handmade bag giveaway yet, hop to it!  It ends on Wednesday. 

DH & I were, as is our custom, at a yard sale earlier this summer.  At this one sale, I kept seeing this sad little wooden cat. It was super-tacky.  (See exhibit A, below.)  I thought to myself, "who would buy that?" And I don't know why, but I kept thinking about it - where it would end up (Goodwill or the dumpster, I figured), or what kind of person would look at it and decide that they'd pay a quarter to have it in their house.

Exhibit A: The Tacky Wooden Cat, bless its heart

 And then, inexplicably, I picked it up.

What the heck, say you???  I honestly don't know!  I just think I thought, if I can make this stupid tacky thing look cute, I will be amazed, and declare myself the queen.  Queen of what, I don't know. 

So it sat for a while in my sewing room, staring at me with those sad, crooked little eyes.  As if to say, "don't make fun of me. I'm just a wooden cat."  I just needed it to sit there until I figured out what to do.  Well, when I don't know what to do with something, usually the spraypaint comes out.  Either that, or Mod Podge.  Well, this time, it was both.  A double dose!

First the spraypaint.

Ahh, better already!

Next, I just kind of had an idea of some sort of stylized design.  Vinyl, maybe.  It would have been glorious to have a Silhouette machine for just such an occasion, but alas. 

So I turned to the SCRAP BAG.  I have to type SCRAP BAG in all caps, because it is such a ridiculous bag of scraps.  Crammed full of fabric. 

Behold: the SCRAP BAG.

Sometimes when I'm feeling extra lazy, I'll stuff a piece of fabric in there that's probably too big to be considered a scrap.  That's why the bag has become a SCRAP BAG.

Yikes!

And then I turned on the TV and started cutting.  This was a perfect "TV craft" - the kind of craft that doesn't take too much brainpower.  I love those.  I usually like to knit while I'm watching TV, but in this heat (with no air conditioning), I'm not touching any kind of yarn.  Not with a 10 foot pole.

I cut the scraps into smaller scraps, then laid them out in some formation that didn't exactly look like what I envisioned, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless.

 Then I Mod Podged them all down...

that's my official Mod Podging finger. 

It was at this point that the second-guessing began. 

...and decided that I wanted to do a little more....so I just went with it.

You could say that this was an "organic" craft process.  Mainly because no pesticides or hormones were used.

So I present to you: The Wooden Cat That Used To Be Tacky But Is Now Kind Of Cool.

I'd like to put it to a vote, and you won't hurt my feelings...

Is this an improvement, or did I only make matters worse?
Would you have this in your home? (And the attic doesn't count)
Am I nuts?

Don't answer that last one.

 Personally, I'm loving it!

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