Sparkle the Designer Cat's Blog, page 434

Sunday Catinee: Skater Cat

Here is a kitty who will take your breath away! Didga (pronounced DID-ja, as in didgeridoo) is an Australian feline who loves to skateboard! Here are some of her best tricks… but don’t think this came about over night. Didga learned her skills for 18 months, and this video took 6 months to shoot, often with two camera operators. You can tell how much she loves it — and I would too if I had the beautiful Australian coastline to look at while I skated! Make sure you watch all the way through — there are some very cute shots at the end.

In case you are wondering, Didga’s human, Robert Dollwet, is an animal trainer with 33 years of experience… and he adores his girl!

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 Layers and Tips Edition

When my human makes a graphic with me, she uses something (some things, actually) called Layers. Of course, Photoshop has the ability to create and edit layers, but some of the other, less intimidating programs like Pixlr do too. I think there are even elementary layers in Photoshop Elements and the Royale version of Picmonkey. I know many of you are kind of scared when you hear the word Layers, so I want to explain a little bit about them because they are actually fun and you don’t have to be real smart or artistic to make use of them!

My human used several layers — not really that many to make my Valentine’s Day graphic:

Here is the graphic she began with:

Now, here is what a layer is: imagine a piece of paper that is covered with a bunch of patterns. Then lay another piece of paper on top of it that is blank except for an image in the middle of it — and the blank part of the paper is transparent. You can move the image around on top of the paper with the patterns and you will see both the patterns and the image. Now, take another transparent piece of paper with some text on it and put that on top of the other two pieces of paper. You can move all these pieces of paper, independent of one another until you have a composition you like. That is the basic part of what layers do. Layers can do a lot more than that, but with just this little bit of knowledge you can do lots of things already!

In Photoshop, you’ll usually find the Layers panel on the right hand side of the computer screen. You can actually put it anywhere you want, but that is its default placement. Here are the layers from my Valentine’s Day image:

It took three layers to get me inside of the heart shape in the middle. I think this close up gives you a clue as to how it was done.

My human made a duplicate layer of the heart graphic and cut out the pink of the heart in the center. There are a lot of ways to that. Photoshop makes it really easy with a tool called “Magic Eraser” — you just click on that tool, place it on a color you want to get rid of (make transparent) and click… and it’s gone! It works best when the color is solid, with no shading or gradients. So it was perfect to use here. Then she put an image of me she had cropped in between the two layers and moved it around until she liked the way I was positioned. Then she added the text on different layers and that was it!

Another great thing about layers is you can hide them! My Facebook page header has a couple of different backgrounds that I can have my human turn on or off, depending on the holiday. Here is the regular background turned on:

For Valentine’s Day, she turned off the regular background and turned on a bokah heart background that was already there and instantly made a Valentine’s Day header! You can do this with text, images or any other thing that is on a layer.

Maybe you are wondering about the cropped image of me. I have to warn you, the next part is a little advanced! But if you know something about cropping, and it makes you crazy sometimes, this might be good to know.

If you do cropping, I bet you go nuts trying to crop around cat fur! So does my human. She hates it. So do a lot of other humans, which is why you see the same cropped kitty images used on lots of different graphics! Well, it had been a while since my human had done a new one of me, so she cursed a little and went ahead and did it. She found a photo of me with a mostly solid background (which, if you read my blog regularly, you know is kind of hard to find!). She cropped around my head and body as best she could and when she couldn’t do any more without wanting to stab herself, she pulled out the secret weapon she learned from somewhere that she can’t remember.

She clicks on the Eraser tool (the regular, not the Magic one), and then picks one of the scattery looking brush styles, the rougher looking, the better! She then adjusts the size of the Eraser brush to best work with whatever size image she is working with and then, very carefully, just pokes the edge of it along the edge of the cropped out image. It creates a fur-like effect. She does this all around my fur and then she is done! Well, except for the whiskers. They are “drawn” in using Paths. That is another Photoshop trick that is a little bit advanced. But if you know about Paths and have used them, you will appreciate this video my human found that teaches you how to do it! The video quality is terrible but if you are the slighest bit familiar with Paths and you want to extend whiskers beyond where you cropped a kitty, it is worth dealing with it.

And all that leads me to my human’s biggest photo editing tip: if there is some sort of effect or something else she wants to do, she Googles it or does a search on YouTube! Then if the tutorial or video is good, she bookmarks it. That is how she has learned to do a bunch of stuff, and not just photo editing.

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!

Happy Valentine’s Day Cards and Giveaway Winner

It’s Valentine’s Day and I am ready to pick the names of the readers who will get Hello Kitty cards from me!

Oh, look who’s here! It’s the thumb biter.

Well, I am not going to let her stop me. I will be sending out cards to:

theCatStreetBoyz, Andrea and the Celestial Kitties, Pat Worden, Random Felines, Ms. Phoebe’s Mom, EmilyKarn, Kitties Blue, Feline Yogi, Sweet Purrfections, Fuzz Mother, Jan’s Funny Farm, Sammy, Amelia Hughes, Sonja Martinez, Jim Kurack, Tamar of I Have Cat, Spitty, Pricilla, Sue Brandes, jmujh, Purr Therapy, Baby Tali and Crepes!

If I do not already have your address handy, expect an email from me so I can get it!

And now it’s time to announce the winner of the kitty ring holder… except somekitty is in the way! Can I have some space here?

That’s better! The winner of the kitty ring holder is:

Pozzo!

Concatulations! Even though I did not throw a party this year, I had fun! And what’s more, I got featured today on Rascal and Rocco’s Pet Parade! That was a cool Valentine’s Day surprise!

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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!

Dream Teeth… I Mean, Treats

A few days ago, Binga and I were thrilled to get a package from Chewy.com! I was expecting some new treats from them, so I knew this was going to be good.

Except it wasn’t! At least not to me — it was a bunch of Valentine’s Day candy for my human! She liked it, but I was a little put off.

But never fear — Chewy.com redeemed themselves a couple of days later when my Wysong Dream Treats arrived!

I got the rabbit flavor (with apologies to my bun friend Speedy). All the Dream Treats are true, non-thermal raw treats, which means they are not heated above 118 degrees. The meat is human grade and U.S. sourced — all the stuff that my human finds important. There are also ingredients in addition to the protein, including organic blueberry and barley grass powder, plus chia seeds, broccoli sprouts and more. That sounds like stuff my human eats, so I sort of ignored that part. These treats are meant for cats, dogs and ferrets. My human thought the protein to carb ratio was probably better balanced for dogs than cats, but she figured that since it was meant as a treat, it was okay for us.

I hope that does not mean I have to share this with the dog here — or any random ferrets! ’Cause this is really good stuff. The treats come in big discs that are supposed to be broken up for us kitties, but I couldn’t wait! I wanted a taste right away.

My human did manage to wrestle the disc away from me and break it up into pieces I could actually eat. They were tasty!

After I had a few chunks, my human let Binga come up to try some. Here is some advice for you: if Binga ever looks at you like this, beware!

She got so frenzied over the treats that she also chomped my human’s thumb and drew blood! Although the bleeding stopped (after a while) and the pain went away, my human does not take cat bites lightly (plus she was handling raw meat, even if it was freeze dried), so she stopped by urgent care to get it taken care of. They soaked it in some weird looking gunk, gave her a tetanus shot and some meds and told her to come back if it got any worse. But it’s already better today.

Bottom line: all of us loved these Wysong Dream Treats (yes Boodie got some too)! And Binga even gave them thumb’s up!
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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!

Wordless Wednesday: This Week’s Outtakes

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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!

Several Cool Things

Several cool things have been going on around here, so I thought I’d put ’em all in one post!

First up, the Paw Project! As you might recall, during November and December, I vowed to donate all royalties I received from my No Declaw tote bag to this awesome organization, which has the goal of educating humans about how awful it is to declaw cats, and to encourage them to outlaw declawing. My goal was to sell 20 totes, and I wound up selling 14 for a total of $20.07 in royalties. My human rounded that up to $25 and sent it in, not realizing that currently, with a minimum donation, they will send you a copy of the Paw Project DVD! My human was really surprised when it arrived in the mail. Since declawing is already illegal in Los Angeles, my human wanted to send the DVD to someone who could use it. It turned out that somebody she knows in Seattle had recently seen the movie and was fired up to do work towards outlawing declawing up there, so she sent the DVD to them.

We got these in the mail around the same time. If you follow Bugsy and Knuckles and their artist human, Lou Belcher, you might recognize them! They were part of the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge that Lou took last month. You can see all the paintings from that project here. My human was really drawn to these two paintings — she loved the colors — and she kept staring at them. Finally she had to break down and buy them, and she is really glad she did because they are even prettier in real life than they are on the computer screen! They are kind of iridescent. There are other paintings that are still available, so check them out.

Lastly, I found that Lay’s potato chips was having a contest where you could make up your own chip flavor and compete for a million dollar prize! Well, you know I was all over that! Do you realize how many cat trees and buckets of KFC that would buy? So I entered my own flavor: Chicken à la Kitty! It is chicken (duh) and catnip, plus added taurine, because it is a supplement we kitties all need! If you want to vote for it, you can do so here. Actually, the votes don’t really count towards winning — human judges are going to decide based on flavor. I think the votes are just for fun. But it’s still cool to see my flavor have so many more votes than most of the other ones humans are coming up with!
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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!

A Small Valentine’s Gesture and Petit Giveaway

My human is way too busy working on the cat rescue anthology to help me throw a Valentine’s Day party this year. But that’s okay — there are others happening around the blogosphere, and I’m sure you all will be really busy! But I did want to do something nice for you kitties. My human brought home these Hello Kitty Valentines, and I thought I’d like to hand them out randomly to some of my readers.

They are cute — they come with little lollipops.

Here is a closer look at them. I will personally sign them for each reader I pick!

I can give out 24 of them. All you have to do is leave a comment by Thursday night, saying you would like one, and I will randomly choose who gets them, and announce it on Valentine’s Day! But that’s not all.

When my human bought the Valentine’s Day cards, she also bought this little metal kitty ring holder for herself… and then realized she didn’t need it! Her rings already have a place where they go, and this little cat would get lost on her big dresser. So she said I could give it away to one of my readers.

Here’s a close-up of the kitty out of the box so you can see its rhinestone eyes. It’s just a little, inexpensive thing, but I thought one of you might like it. So when you comment, let me know if you would like to have it, and when I choose who gets the Valentines, I’ll also pick someone to get this kitty ringholder!

The best part? Since no companies are involved in this, everyone is eligible, including my international readers!

Oh, and everyone can have my Valentine eCard — you can get it right here.
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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!

My Valentine’s Day eCard

Even if you do not get a physical Valentine’s Day card from me, you can get a virtual one! Please feel free to take it. This is the large, 500px size.

Below is the small, 250px badge.

Happy Valentine’s week!
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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: Cat Olympic Domination

We have not been following the human Winter Olympics here. Why bother, when you have the Felympics, starring Kodi and Shorty? In this gripping video, the two compete in the Hallway Sprint! Which one will enjoy the thrill of victory and who shall suffer the agony of defeat? You will have to watch all the way to the end!

If you can’t see the video above, 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: Messing Around

Okay, so this photo does not look like my human was messing around, but she basically was:

This was the original:

This photo is a couple of years old and she has always liked it, so she decided to do something arty with it… but she wasn’t sure what. After playing around with various effects in Photoshop and discarding them, she wound up using an “Orton” effect she found on this page of Photoshop hacks. That was one layer. Next she duplicated the photo and did her classic technique to create a sketch effect: increased the sharpening to bring out all the details until they look like a drawing, then converted the image to black and white. After brightening the black and white layer, she put the two copies together with the color layer on top and switched its Blend Mode to Multiply, then lowered the opacity.

Confused yet? Anyhow, that’s how she did it. She didn’t save all the steps as she had no idea what she wanted and kept backtracking so I couldn’t post a tutorial.

For more Caturday Art, go here!
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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!