Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 424

Sunday Catinee: Laundry – U R Doing It Right

This video clip is for all you humans — Chris Poole, assistant to Cole (the black kitty) and Marmalade (logically, the orange one), is washing his bedsheets, and he shows you exactly how to do it, kitty style! You may want a pen and paper to take notes… your cats will thank you!

If you can’t see the above video, click here to watch it on YouTube!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Caturday Art: The Arty Graycie Edition

Remember this photo of Grayce from my human’s BlogPaws visit to the Katnip Lounge crew? My human really liked it, and as she does with so many things she likes, she decided to mess with it. First, in Photoshop, she removed some of the distracting elements in the upper left hand side of the photo. Then she evened out the tone between Grayce’s darker forehead and her lighter muzzle. After that, she used some of the elements of the YouTube video she mentions at the beginning of my “Sketch and Paint” Caturday Art post. But of course she did not follow the instructions exactly.

She did follow the instructions up to the part where you are supposed to add the Gaussian Blur filter. But she used a different filter this time — the Surface Blur filter. She felt it got a sketchier effect on this particular photograph.

Then to make the sketch effect darker and more defined, she used the levels adjustment (you find it when you click on the little black and white disk at the bottom of the layers panel. When you click, there’s a drop down menu and Levels is one of the choices.

Of course, she could not just leave Grayce like that. I don’t know if you can tell in the above screen grab, but she used the Quick Selection tool (hit W on your keyboard, or it’s on the left hand side menu) to select Grayce’s eyes. Then she copied them. When she did this, she was on the bottom, color layer. Then, you can see above, she had created an empty layer on top of the other layers. She pasted the copied eyes on this layer.

Well, doesn’t that look dark and creepy! Of course there was more to do, but my human just wanted to make the adjustments on the eye layer and leave the others alone. So she went to top menu of Photoshop to the Image adjustments to do the single layer changes. Instead of explaining where you find them, I figured I would just show you the path below.

Using these adjustments, she lightened Grayce’s eyes and made them more green.

Then she added some sharpening to make them less realistic and more artistic.

She also dialed down the Fill on this layer. It gave a better effect than lowering the Opacity.

My human liked this effect enough that she repeated it with the background (minus the sharpening). On the layer she pasted this background, she also used the Erase trick from another tutorial to draw in Grayce’s fur on the edges.

Then she did the same thing with the part of the chair that showed up in the foreground — but this time she did sharpen it along with lightening it.

And this is the final picture:

Incidentally, when you are done and you want to combine the layers to make the file smaller (leaving the layers makes the file lots bigger), in this case you want to “Flatten” the image. At the far right hand side of the Layers, Channels and Paths tab is a flyout menu where you will find it. You have the choice of either Merging the layers or “Flattening” them. In this case (but not always) Merging darkens the picture and does things you don’t want, while Flattening keeps the look.

Don’t be afraid to play around with any of the effects in these tutorials! Just remember to make a duplicate of your picture and experiment on the duplicate. You don’t have to follow the instructions exactly, either. Mess around and see what happens!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Last-Minute Outtakes

My human decided she wanted to get just a couple more photos for the giveaway I have planned, so it’s going to be up on Monday. In the meantime, here are some outtakes I thought you would enjoy!

Have you ever looked at a photo of yourself and wondered, “What-the-heck was I doing with my mouth?”

I know what I was doing with my mouth here — I was yelling at my human to hurry up and get the shot so I could get on with my scheduled nap.

I am really embarrassed to confess that Binga and I came to blows over the nice card and gift from Ginger Jasper’s humans.

Here is my human trying to touch Salem. I think Salem wants to call a bodyguard.

And here I am, telling my human to clean up her messy desk and get back to work on kitty business!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Kitty Tarot: Reading the Nine Lives Spread

As you recall from last week, I picked Truffles of Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries and Meows for the Nine Lives Spread using the Mystical Cats Tarot cards. Just wait ’til you see the cards I picked! Before I begin, I want to say something: Truffles is not a cat I know well. I keep meaning to add her blog to my Feedly list but have not yet, so I have only seen her blog posts very occasionally. I have no preconceived notions about her, other than she is a very pretty tortie girl. Truffles and Melissa will have to let me know how I did!

The Nine Lives reading is an overall look at your lifetime, and it is not something that is done casually or frequently. It is recommended that the Nine Lives reading be done on anniversaries, after going through a significant event, and in any case, never more than annually. I shuffled the cards for Truffles and here is the spread I came up with:

As you can see, there are some very strong cards here! Several Major Arcana and court cards. This tells me right away that Truffles is no ordinary kitty, and she is destined to be known far outside her home. Truffles has wisdom to impart to her fellow felines, and to humans too.

Let’s go over each card, one by one.

1. The first card indicates Truffles’ cosmic assignment when she entered this life, and the card here is the Earth Kitten. The Earth Kitten forever sees things as fresh and new and to be explored, even as her instincts help to keep her safe. Your cosmic assignment is to keep that sense of newness and curiosity and impart it to those who come in contact with you.

2. The second card is a gift you were given to accomplish this. Truffles’ second card is the Earth Tom, which shows a young Tom cat rescuing a kitten who has strayed too far. It shows you have a helpful nature, which combined with your perpetually youthful spirit, will bring your message to others. It also indicates you will receive aid in doing this, partially from your human and partially from spirit.

3. This third card is a lesson you have learned well, and Truffles’ card is the Three of Earth. It shows three cats cornering a yummy bug, and it shows the value of teamwork. Truffles, you have learned well to work with your human as a team to impart your spirit and wisdom. Sadly, I don’t think this card means she will help you catch bugs.

I do want to note that your first three cards are all Earth cards. It indicates to me that your mission in this kitty lifetime is very practical, in spite of the whimsical nature it has on the surface. Remember, you are a breath of fresh air, and all creatures would die without that.

4. This card, the Six of Sea, indicates a transforming milestone. It shows Sea kittens frolicking in the water, and it indicates that at some point early in your life you realized the value of fun and decided to hang onto it for always. Joy and innocent happiness are necessary qualities to life! Kind of like breaths of fresh air.

5. This card is what demands your attention right now, and it is the Seven of Earth, reversed. It shows a cat patiently waiting for its prey to emerge from its nest — is there one thing in your life that you are concentrating on too much? Have you focused so intensely that you have lost the bigger picture? Don’t let seemingly important things spoil your joy and sense of fun! Remember, we kitties were meant to have short attention spans — use that.

6. Your sixth card is an adventure yet to come, and it is a Major Arcana, the Good Kitty! It shows that you have a great purpose in life, and that you are meant to spread your light far and wide. There is a big event in your future that will help you achieve this, and I am very excited for you! Make sure you are ready by dropping any preconceived notions or self-judgments. You will need all your kitty senses to live in the moment — and make the best of it.

7. This card indicates a lesson you have yet to learn, and it is another Major Arcana, The Lovers. While you may know the bond of love, you still keep a small piece of yourself in reserve — and you shouldn’t. If you keep your heart and soul open to it, you will learn that love must be given freely for it to thrive. This gives life its richness, so do not deny yourself — or others — that.

8. This is the gift that you will give the world, and it is a strange card for this placement: the Nine of Sea, reversed. This card is all about the dreamworld, and making your dreams a reality. Perhaps this card seems airy-fairy when compared with all the other Earth cards in your spread. It could indicate that, in spite of your grounded nature, your real gift is in showing that wishes and dreams do come true, if you work for them — and if you allow yourself to believe.

9. The final card in the Nine Lives Spread shows what you will release when you leave this life, and you got The Cat. You know what this means, don’t you? That after teaching so many others feline wisdom, you can leave your body knowing that your job as a cat is done, and you need never walk this path again. You are destined to master your felinity in your lifetime and will be free to follow other roads with more lessons yet unlearned.

I hope you enjoyed this reading, Truffles! And I hope everyone else did too.

Disclosure: Links to Amazon are Associate links, and I get a small commission for each sale… ’cause a kitty does not live on fortunes alone!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Workout Wednesday

Now that my human has returned from BlogPaws, she wants to get back to her exercise DVDs. But she is not allowed to work out until I give her permission!

Today I decided that I would do the workout instead of her. It is a vintage Kathy Smith step aerobics DVD! Even a kitty wants wants to have shapely legs (and tail).

I did not ask for a workout buddy! Can she go away now?
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

The #BlogPaws Cat Swag Bag!

When we left off yesterday, I hadn’t looked in the BlogPaws swag bag yet! Let’s see what’s inside.

Wow! This is a pretty amazing haul!

Binga is making sure there is nothing left in the bag!

She also wanted to pose with all the food and treats we got. Which did not mean she got to eat any of it!

My human said this was yummy and I would never have to take pills again. I am not sure if I believe her.

I think I am kind of insulted she made me pose with these samples! I am not a dirty kitty and I do not have bad breath! Binga should have posed instead.

I did like posing with all the cat toy swag! And I was good — I did not try to destroy any of them. At least not at that moment.

We also got a Drinkwell Hydrate filtration system! Our fountains keep dying and my human hasn’t replaced the last one for a long time.

All this swag was pretty amazing and I have to say, BlogPaws stepped up to the plate for us kitties this year! But what was even more special was that several of the cat bloggers’ humans brought gifts of their own to hand out! Yes, we got another cowbell from Glogirly!

Coco’s human gave the cat bloggers little gift bags with toys and candy — it is a tradition that she does every year she comes to BlogPaws.

We also got soap made personally by the Happy Goats!

Stella’s human brought cute sleeping masks and these charming pill boxes.

And the Katnip Lounge kitties gave us a whole cornucopia of toys and intoxicants, including my favorite pipe cleaners and both silver vine and valerian!

I think the valerian is the reason why my human’s suitcase was searched! Fortunately, nothing was confiscated.

Paws down, the loveliest gift came from Ginger Jasper’s humans. It was a card and a wire kitty book clip with a charm.

Here is a better view of it. We will treasure this beautiful memento.

Oh! And what did I win from the Cat Style Lounge?

It was the Drinkwell Stoneware Avalon fountain!

So maybe we won’t need the filtration system after all!

Are you wondering if I will be giving some or most of this away? I will! But not this week, because I have another giveaway already scheduled! Stay tuned!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

What My Human Saw at BlogPaws 2014

This year, the BlogPaws conference was held in Lake Las Vegas, which is a totally man-made oasis out in the middle of nowhere. There was a fake beach right outside the hotel.

This is as close as my human got to it because she did not go outside of the hotel once… except to visit the Katnip Lounge cats. They live very close by, and I think they are a much more interesting destination than Fake Lake Las Vegas.

Ignore Salem’s annoyed facial expression — she was actually happy to greet everyone who stopped by the catio. And there were a lot of humans visiting! The Katnip Lounge humans had cat bloggers’ humans come by every day of the conference!

My human did not hunt down all the kitties for photos since she has been there before, but she did get a few of those who hung around. Here is Maui and his long whiskers.

The Baby was around a lot.

Sylvester was very relaxed!

Another one of The Baby.

My human got arty with Grayce.

That is, until she got tired of my human pestering her.

The BlogPaws sessions started the day after my human visited the Katnip Lounge catio. They worked extra hard this year to feature more cat stuff. They even had a session on “How to Speak Cat.” The speaker was Steve Dale, so it was an excellent introduction for humans who are having problems understanding Cat.

And there was a Cat Style Lounge, put together by Hauspanther’s Kate Benjamin, which was nothing short of awesome!

There was a huge part of the exhibition hall dedicated only to cats and cat style!

There were all sorts of cool toys!

Fancy fountains!

Cool loungers!

Feline Yogi had some of their mats and toys on display.

And there was food and cat care items too!

Best of all, there was a drawing at the end of the conference and lots of cat bloggers’ humans won something that was on display! Including my human — in fact she won one of the items you see above. Betcha can’t guess which one!

And of course there were celebkitties! My human got to meet Waffles, but after all my warnings, I think she was kind of scared to be too forward with him. So she only got a couple of photos and just touched him lightly. No grabby hands.

Coco the Couture Cat was also there, looking classy and stylish as always!

But the best part of the conference was that Ginger Jasper’s humans came by one evening! They were celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary in Las Vegas and stopped by the hotel to meet a bunch of the cat bloggers’ humans! There were a number of flat and semi-flat cats in attendance that evening. Oh, and one decidedly not-flat cat posed with them.

Yep, that is Coco up there, keeping it real!

What about the BlogPaws swag? Was it an improvement over last year’s paltry haul? I will tell you right now that the answer is yes, but you will have to wait until tomorrow to see what is in the bag!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Sunday Catinee: What Goes Up Must Come Down

Some cats like unrolling toilet paper rolls. But I’ll wager there aren’t many like Willie, who rolls them back up too!

If you can’t see the above video, click here to watch it on YouTube!

I also like that his human is totally supportive of his habit.
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Caturday Art: The Other Kitty Oil Edition

As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago, I offered my human’s services to try out some of her digital art techniques on photos of readers’ kitties. I got some submissions, and for the first one, my human picked out a very handsome guy named Jefferson:

Jefferson is a seven-year-old flamepoint Ragdoll kitty and he lives with my reader, Kathy M. The photo Kathy sent was straight out of the camera, with no editing (just as I requested). That way my human could decide what adjustments to make before getting arty with it. She cropped and brightened the photo just a bit. It made Jefferson even handsomer!

She tried a few different techniques on him before deciding to do what she really should have done in the first place — put his photo through the Akvis Artwork software. Because Jefferson has the kind of look that really works well with their Oil Paint effect. The exact settings she used are in the photo below… although it is different with every photo she uses.

This is the photo after it went through Akvis Artwork… but my human was not done with it yet.

She then added brush strokes around the edges. It’s really easy to do this in Photoshop — you just add a layer on top of the photo art and fill it with white or a very light, canvas-type color. Then you use the Erase tool and choose a brush that matches the strokes of the painting. Then you “paint” on the white layer to expose the painting on the layer below. My human cheated a little and used a white, grunge-y layer she has for the top layer — that way she only had to paint out the edges and not the whole picture. Here is how Jefferson’s picture wound up:

I hope Jefferson’s human likes it!

For more Caturday Art, visit Athena!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!

Previews of #BlogPaws

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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” I have answers to many annoying problems in my two award-winning books! Visit my author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of my awesome Dear Sparkle books!