How to make your kitty litter box pretty!

This is a step by step tutorial on how to make your cats kitty litter cute in probably the easiest/cheapest way possible. I have a cat names "Tifa" and her cat litters are always very boring because the cheapest ones are well...bland (to put it nicely). I have 2 ways where I have adjusted the looks of her litter boxes to be unique and pretty.


This is how both litter boxes turn out when they are finished.



Step #1:  I  start each box by getting the items I need. You can find cheap litter boxes pretty much anywhere. Even the dollar stores have them. I got Tifas for a cheaper price at Petsmart because I wanted a fairly good quality one, as well as a top to keep in the stink. Even at petsmart you can get some for $20.00 and under especially if you get them on sale. Walmart also has some great brands for cheaper. In my personal opinion, I recommend one with a lid (if your cat is used to it) because it keeps in nasty odours and it looks pretty and allows them to feel more comfortable. If your cat is not a fan of the lid litters, no fear you can still decorate the topless ones.

  So once I have the litter boxes, I needed black paint (for the zebra design). You can find this anywhere. Such as Walmart, Michaels, Currys, and yes the dollarstore. It does not have to be anything super expensive or amazing. I like folkart products for things like this. For example: http://www.michaels.com/FolkArt-%C2%AE-Acrylic-Colors---2-oz/cp0854,default,pd.html?start=28&cgid=products-craftpainting-paint
 Sometimes if you are lucky you can find it at the dollar store or they have their own brand that does the same quality of work. If you want some crazy colours etc...I would check Michaels or Currys.

 For the other box, I used "scrapbooking" cat stickers that you can find in the dollar store. Anytime you go to the dollarstore you can find scrapbooking sections. When you do, search for kitty designs. I like the ones with a transparent background since it fits in a lot more. I find these type of stickers tend to stick a lot nicer on things rather then using your regular type of sticker. You can also find stickers like this at Michaels and sometimes Walmart. For example: http://www.michaels.com/3D-Sticker-Purrfect/sb3142,default,pd.html?start=29&cgid=products-scrapbooking-stickers

 Last....we need a kitty. Why make this if you have no cat? lol Any type/colour is allowed haha.

Here is my cat Tifa, ready to start doing crafts with me.

Here is one of the litter boxes before.

Here is the scrapbooking stickers that I have for this crafting tutorial.



Step #2: This step is basic. It includes painting (in my case a zebra design) and then of course placement of stickers.You really need to figure out ahead of time where you would like them to go. Otherwise it may look silly or too busy. Unless you want that of course.



Step #3: So once everything is dried (if you decide to paint), go ahead and add final touches. With mine it was a door design. Just a cute quick little painting with a Do not enter sign and a door with flowers. This particular litter box had a flap to keep in odour. I ended up removing it though because I felt it was a pain for Tifa and she got annoyed with it.



Step #4: Finding all the spots to place the stickers in the right places did work out for me. I placed them in places I wanted to, however feel free to place them anywhere you choose to. 



Step #5 (Final): For my final part, you can see they are both all put together. One is basic and took barely anytime (with stickers) and the final price with the litter box cost me about $11.50. However the stickers were part of a gift, so with the stickers about $12.80. Nice litter box and nice simple design. The zebra design one took about 30 minutes to do, still not long. We paid a little more for that litter box because it has some extras. With the litter box design and the paint/paintbrush, the total came to around $25.00. Still cheap and unique. You can customize your box to have any saying on it or any designs. That is what I love about it.


TIFA APPROVES!!!!

Done and put together

Done and put together.



This is a fun, easy project to do by yourself or with your kids for cheap. You can get it to match your decor or even just look super unique. I had fun. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

Wolf Illustration Friday "Wild"

For my fifth Illustration Friday piece, I decided to use the word "Wild". When I think of wild, I think of wild animals because I adore animals. I also have a soft spot for wolves and they live in the wild. So for this piece, I have decided to work with a wolf and make it into a wolf in the wild type design with photo manipulation.

This is the final piece of my work. Please see below to view my entire process.


Before any steps: Before any steps, things are quickly sketches as a thumbnail just to get an idea. Don't laugh too hard at my quick sketching haha.



Step #1: I started off by finding a stock photo. Then I made it dark because I wanted to work with a dark photo with this picture. I then blurred the edges a bit.



Step #2: I wanted to edit the photo a little more, so I changed the photo blueish by colouring over the photo with blue and setting it to multiple. Then I lowered the opacity and made some adjustments to the brightness etc.



Step #3: I had to find a stock photo of a wolf. I wanted to darken the wolf so I did and then did a small amount of highlighting on the wolf for it to show.



Step #4: I changed the wolf in this part to be blue, but not too blue because I do not want it to look un natural. I used my tablet to draw in highlights around the wolf, draw in splashes in the water and drips. Then I made some smoke using a stock photo (however it is easy to make your own as I have shown in past blog posts). I made highlights all through its fur because it needs to be brought out more and visible. I blackened out the eyes because I prefer to re-make them myself. 



Step #5 (Final): For my final image, everything is now put together and made all pretty. I put falling petals on it, made the eyes from scratch and added all the writing that needed to be on there. Again, I really love to add in the stock providers site information because I believe that it helps out the photographer. Remember if you are a photo manipulator, you should always check to make sure the photos are allowed to be used for what you are going to do. On sites like deviantart.com etc sometimes the photographer has a set of rules for you to follow. Other times, you may have to contact them. Always try and give credit because they work hard too. 




Thank you and I hope you enjoyed my blog this week!

Pony Chibi Illustration Friday "Yesterday"

 I have used the word "Yesterday" to design this. I have a long reason why. I currently own a website called "EquinePaw.com". This is a text based horse/dog sim game that will hopefully be opened late 2013 early 2014 for beta testing. In these type of games, there is many pieces of work that have to go into it other than just the basics. One thing is called "item art". This is small pieces of artwork that get uploaded to the site for people to go to the in game store and "buy" to care for their animal or to help with their game. I have been teaching myself how to make these and have already sold a few to other sim game owners. The reason I choose the word "yesterday" for this design was mainly because I was doing a lot of work on my site yesterday and decided to design from there.



This is the final pieces of my work. Please see below to view my entire process.



To start off, I had to do some thumbnails. I decided to sketch this and then go with this design. in the end I did not use the top hat though. 


Step #1: This step seems pretty basic. Once you have the design (above) on photoshop, you can use your tablet to simply sketch it out with a black brush to get the black outline.



Step #2: For this part, I wanted to colour the pony pink. I made sure I did the colouring underneath the black lines on another layer. Then I used the quick selection tool to only get the parts inside the pony. Then I used the paint bucket to put the colours in.



Step #3: This is where I added some shading. Shading can be hard sometimes to figure out where to add it. However you just have to know where abouts you would be getting the sun and go from there. I have made it so that the sun would be on the right hand side shining down. So I made all her shading underneath some lines and mostly on the left.  



Step #4: This is for highlights. Because there is shading, there should always be some sort of highlights to show where the light would be as well. So I put the highlights in most of the opposite parts from the shadows. They are on the top. It was made with a lighter pink rather han a complete white. Too white would be too much. Remember to always make these layer underneath the black lines and to use clipping masks. Clipping masks help so much with things like this.



Step #5: Time for the hoofs! I coloured them in black and then made the shading on them. pretty basic and simple. Again using a clipping path.   



Step #6: I wanted to add details to the horn since it looked kind of funny before. So I added the black lines and the shading to the horn. This brought it out more and made it look a lot more like a horn.



Step #7: For this part, I set the brush size to about 2. Then drew in a bunch of lines to flow with the mane and tail of the pony. Then I used the smudge tool to make it mix a little better. I made sure darker streaks where close to the bottom and lighter were at the top. I also added the inside of the eye. 



Step #8: After all of this, I wanted to make a set of them in different colours. So for each one I just changed the colouring hue/saturation with each layer. You could also flatten it and change the colour that way as well which is far easier. (keep in mind some of these show that there is no inside of the eye by mistake, however that layer was turned off by accident so it really does have pupils :P). I decided to go with pink, purple, blue, green and yellow for the designs. 



Step #9: Even though I am going to sell these cute little ponies as a set, I have also decided to make a small gif to go with them. I had some spare time and designed them. It is very easy to design a gif in photoshop using the animation frame setting. This is a simple/basic one but I thought it would be cute to go through all the colours. You can edit how fast it goes and I decided to make this one 0.2 seconds because it will be a quick round through the colours. I also changed it to go on forever. In the end, i changed some sizes and made a few different sizes of gifs. I have also shown the working gif of two sizes below.



Thank you and I hope you enjoyed my blog this week on the pony and working gifs!

Slenderman Illustration Friday "Myth"

For my Third Illustration Friday piece, I decided to use the word "Myth". As a video gamer, I have seen a large fad lately with Slenderman. Slenderman actually has a large mythical history and has recently been made into a ton of games. Although I play many video games, I prefer to watch my boyfriend play the slenderman series. I have been inspired by watching him play and decided I would love to base my work on him. Slenderman has tentacle style arms and no face and is very tall. I made him somewhat cute in the end and chibi style and I decided to create a cat for him as a pet :P

This is the final piece of my work. Please see below to view my entire process.


Before any steps: Before any steps, things are quickly sketches as a thumbnail just to get an idea. 



Step #1: I started off by making a quick background and then creating slendermans head by painting it in and then blending/blurring.



Step #2: I started making the shading on the face as well as the bottom half and his cute little hands. Again blending, painting and blurring.



Step #3: From here I wanted to start on his tentacle styles on back of him. I wanted to make them fairly basic because they are in the background.  



Step #4: This step, I wanted to created his little shirt and red tie. He is starting to get a little cute now. He is finished for now. Now on to his kitty.



Step #5: I have started with his cat by making the cat black and adding small whiskers. Again I have done blending and blurring.  



Step #6: I finished this off by adding the shirt and tie to the cat. Then I made tentacles to the kitty but made less since it is just a small cat. Together they somewhat match and that is what I wanted.



Step #7 (Final): For my final image, everything is now put together and made to match. However I still needed to add the background. In slendermans games, the screen goes all static and you die. So I made the screen to show a lot of static for the background. Which is made by the grain feature in photoshop. I added the names and my logo and added a slight white glow around them both :) 




Thank you and I hope you enjoyed my blog this week!