Double Butthole V-day (Patreon)

I snuck a glimpse of Luke's Valentine's Day card on Instagram, so I figured I'd share this totally idiotic card's process with y'all here. :)

I wanted to reference something Luke had been into recently - the new Animal Collective album, Barrie (whose chill music we've both gone bananas over lately), Ollie Ollie World - but ultimately the video game Sludge Life was the most gouache-able, so I pulled the first image that came to mind:

A cat with a double butthole. (You have to find it in the game.)

Bonus, the cat looks like Ollie! Except for the buttholes.

Luke's favorite color is a sort of peachy-pink, conveniently. Holiday appropriate, even.

I dampened the whole card and laid down the background & ears first, then added a touch of yellow to some white gouache so that the white parts of the cat were a little warmer.

Next, black!

You'll notice I'm leaving the buttholes empty. That's because I wanted them to line up with some carefully cut-out hearts on the front:

(I rubber cemented black paper all over the front & back. You KNOW it's love if I rubber cement something for you.)

Once I was able to line up the heart cutouts perfectly, I went in with the final touch: PINK BUTTHOLES.

I finished it off by slicing off the extra length to make it more square, writing some gushy stuff inside, and then tying a ribbon around it. The ribbon was to force Luke to look at the simple pair of pink hearts (with mysterious black dots in the center) a little longer before slipping it off to open it and reveal the masterpiece within. Presentation is everything!

I also learned how to make a gift bag (youtube it!) to hold some candy and a rose, and made a black envelope from scratch, decorating both in sophisticated-looking colors so as to really set the mood for Double Butthole Cat.

I'm a great girlfriend.

(I'm a great girlfriend because I didn't bring these to the fancy restaurant full of locals that we went to. I let him open it when we got home.)

Hope y'all did something fun, fancy, dumb, or just super self-care-y for yourselves this week! <3