Soooooooo I was hit with the inspiration to make this as I was going to bed last night, because Liz and I were joking about the "but babe, you love being gaslit" meme, which led to talking about Sena, which then of course led to discussing his indoor boyfriends XD It's funny, I absolutely could not stand this dude at first, but I've now begrudgingly come around- sort of.

All this is to say I just had to make this as soon as I woke up XD

Other than that...fixing sleep schedule is still going, uh, mid? I'm sleepy all the time and still not able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, so fuck me I guess? I'm naturally more nocturnal, but everyone else in the household works a 9-5 and I wanna see them when they're awake :T

ALSO!!!!!!!!!!!! FIRST CLIMAX EVENT HITS ENGSTARS THIS WEEKEND AND I AM PUMPED!!!! It starts with Crazy:B, so you know I'm excited :D I love the MV; it's all of them going on a road trip and it just looks nice *w*

I started making an icon last night before bed, but was too tired to do much with it...and then this morning I was possessed by the desire to make something for Izumi Sena of all people...so I'm gonna try to get back to it.

I FINISHED WRITING THE TUTORIAL!!!!!!!!!!
As with many things regarding icons, it was a labor of love and that just took....a lot of time.........but I'm really proud of it!!!!!! Go check it out @ killiansicons- I mean, if you're into that sort of thing ;D

It's gonna snow tomorrow night, so the household went out today to get salt for the driveway and then completely forgot about the salt. We stopped for bubble tea, swung by my favorite Chinese restaurant to pick up more of their chili oil, and got a lot of other things at Target, but we sure didn't remember what we actually went out for XD

OOPS!!!

I'm still sorting through a lot of the resources I rediscovered, but that's gonna have to be a project for another day. I realized I'm procrastinating what I actually want to do, which is make more enstars icons. I really like the art from the current Valkyrie event in jp, and tbh I meant to make some icons from it the day the event was revealed...but didn't, because instead I made a mood theme and wrote a 2k word long tutorial :T

Procrastination station, aka ADHD life!! I dunno why it's so bad this week.

At least I've wrangled it into some fun projects? Here's hoping I manage to actually what I want next XD

HELL YEAHHHHH THE ENGLISH SERVER GOT THE UPDATE AND MY PROFILE LOOKS SO COOL!!!! Plus I got the new titles that you only get if you've gotten every achievement for a specific character...my months of grinding fans for Kohaku and Madara have paid off~~~


also I just love that you can more easily show off borders + text bubbles now...it's cute!
I went to Costco today, which usually isn't too bad when I go alone, since I'm quite efficient. But something about today was...worse?? Somehow????? I think because it suddenly got a lot warmer in the middle of the day...I dunno, I left feeling super rundown, and then I drove past the exit to get home...as if I've never driven home from that part of town before?????????????? I don't fucking know :T

But I got everything I needed there, so I win anyway!!!! I also managed to unload the fixture that was still in the car, because Pat and I took it apart and just left it there last night. We bought it from the Joanns that was closing this month and had to pick it up before today, so Pat and I went to get it yesterday...and taking it apart was quite the experience. Pat ended up having to partially break it to get it into pieces that would fit into the car, but we're pretty sure we can put it back together.

I got some good pictures of the nearly empty Joanns, though! I remembered to bring my nice camera, so I ended up using a Nikon D3000 + Pixel 8 Pro for ultimate versatility~ I still have to go through all of the, but from the in-camera previews, I got some nice shots :D

Anyway...I'm working on another icon tutorial :D I wanna revisit the sparkle icon tutorial I wrote in 2006, because I've definitely improved since then. Also, it was written for Photoshop CS2, and not all the functions are the same in modern Photoshop.

Writing tutorials just takes sooooooooooo long ;w; I'm trying to be thorough without writing 10k words or something...and sometimes it's hard to tell what counts as general knowledge of the software and what's more specialized that I need to explain. The "curse" of using something for over two decades XD

also I feel like I failed to make a properly "sparkly" icon as an example but WHATEVER

omg wait, I also had a very lucky discovery!!! While looking for something completely unrelated, I found a whole folder of Photoshop brushes I downloaded in like, 2005-2007? Most of them have already been imported into my main massive brush file, but now I can more easily check the credits for them. And there are definitely some that I never got around to, sooooooo it's a really cool find :D

...also I found seven different brush sets that I made in 2005 and have no memory of. Like. What???? I guess it's been 20 years, but I usually have a better idea of resources I've made, since it wasn't that many- or so I thought!!! I ended up condensing three sets of grunge border brushes into one and sharing it @ killiansicons, because what else was I gonna do with them? I'll probably share the rest eventually, I just have to go through them and make new previews.

OKAY NOW THAT I EATEN DINNER I FEEL LIKE I CAN DO THINGS!!!!! Onwards, to writing that tutorial~

Or, technically, belated...since our anniversary was yesterday and the day before. The 23rd is the anniversary of when we started dating and the 24th is our wedding anniversary, but we tend to just celebrate them together for two days straight ;D

AND SO I CAN FINALLY SHARE WHAT I DID FOR LIZ!!!!!! I had to keep this secret for a month while I worked on it, which is basically the biggest challenge ever for me XD

I made them a mixtape!!!!!


Ten years of being dorks together~~~~
That's right, I not only made them a playlist of songs, I turned it into an actual, physical object. I picked a song for each year we've been together and then wrote a note for each one- that's what the booklet is! I know CD players have become a thing of the past in a lot of ways (the last time I had a car with a CD player was in 2013? 2014?), but it's really meaningful to make things.


Look, sometimes you go to make a playlist about your relationship and you have to realize that Fall Out Boy has been a constant throughout XD


I had so much fun designing every part of this, including making a CD label. It's been far too long since we've done this!


You gotta have the cool image behind the transparent bit, it's so important.
I didn't take pictures of every page of the booklet because a lot of it is personal (and it was 16 pages long lmao), so just believe me when I say it came out beautifully and Liz loved it. They took it into work today to display on their desk ;w;

The other big news: We got another cat!


Welcome to the family, Genevieve!!!!!!!! ♥
I have sooooooooo many pictures of her already; she's so sweet!!! We got her from a local shelter and they told us that she doesn't like to be held...which like, okay, maybe she didn't want to be held at the shelter, but she's been crawling all over us. She's been in and out of my lap, my arms, and onto my shoulder while I've been working on this entry ;w; She just has a lot of love and sweetness to share with all of us.

I have more to say on her and integrating her with the household, but I'm hungry XD So, I will save that and more pics for next time ;D

uhhhhh what have I been up to? Besides farting around the house...

Oh! Less housework this week, if only because I had some bad pain days. I did do a big grocery run on Friday. Me and Chi hit four different stores and I got basically everything we needed. And I did make dinner yesterday, even if it was something simple. I was on voice chat with a friend I made at Otakon - because that's a thing I do now???? - and managed to do a bunch of dinner prep while chatting.

Maybe I should try to talk to friends more??????? Like not just online, but on the phone/voice chat/whatever, so that I'm less lonely during the day and it inspires me to get more done. I always do more if I'm not alone. I dunno. I used to talk on the phone all the time, but now it's less of a thing...except for jumping into voice chat on discord is sort of a thing now, I think. I dunno. I sometimes feel old and out of touch, and I'm not even that old XD

I've been picking away at the layout for this journal, but I'm struggling? I dunno. I haven't been happy with a lot of the grunge-y stuff I've done lately, and I don't really know how to fix it. I've gotten back into doing some sparkle graphics recently, partially because I've been doing a backup of them over on InsaneJournal- which btw was a whole saga to get into. But yeah, I'm slowly putting up every freebie/requestable I've ever made over on killiansicons. I suppose I could do that here, but it would completely overtake my graphics journal...I've done close to 200.

ANYWAY. Apparently, my original IJ was deleted & purged for inactivity. I went digging and found the email...which was from when I was in culinary school and didn't have consistent access to a computer. So, I see what happened. But now IJ is fucking invite only - the bane of my existence and why it took me so long to get both LJ and DW accounts - and I don't have friends on journaling sites anymore. And I went around online trying to find someone giving them out, which of course I couldn't. So I made a tumblr post looking for one...which someone replied to today, almost a week later. As if I have that kind of patience XD I paid $5 for a month of paid time so I could get one.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. I couldn't register my original username, because it was deleted and purged. Because fuck you, I guess. I would have to buy a rename token. And I already had to pay for an account, so...I ended up using one of my old GreatestJournal usernames ;D I'm kirrianu over there, and it's been really great to use a whole shit ton of my old icons from GJ. I'm glad I back them all up before the site went up in flames!!!

Anyway. I'm currently waiting on the tree people to come by and give me an estimate for cutting back our neighbor's fucking tree, because they certainly won't do it. And then we can work on dealing with the roof leaking, before that whole side of the house gets fucked up.

Oh, right, I also napped on the couch this morning and had a weird dream. Considering I almost never dream...it was weird :T

I wrote and posted a fanfic this week!!! I've been struggling a lot with actually finishing things...and then even more with getting around to typing them up & posting them online. But yesterday I managed to write a quick drabble during my creative write class and post it! Take that mental illness!!!!!!!

....yeah so my ADHD meds have been on backorder for weeks and I only just got them refilled today XD

But still! I'm pleased with myself re: finishing something, even something short, and then I ended up making a little banner to go at the top of the post for tumblr.


Did I need to make a sparkle graphic banner for a sorta angsty p5 drabble? Yes. Yes, I absolutely did. It's super cute and I'm super happy with it and I super love sparkle graphics still, apparently.

In the middle of working on the order, I decided it was time to fix all the images on my LJ account, because....11 am on Sunday is the best time to fix all the fucking photobucket links, sure!!!! Cool!!!!!!!

This involved screaming in frustration because I couldn't find where I had all the customizations for my graphics journal over there. Like. Okay. Cool. I bought a paid account for my main journal, thinking that would let me edit the style layers.

NOPE.

So then I had to also buy a paid account for my graphics journal because....apparently I was just throwing money away when I was 21???? And I thought putting all the images and shit in a custom layer instead of CSS what a good idea????????

drags hands down face

Anyway. I'm gonna try to get back to actually working at work, what a concept XD

I kind of miss graphics...I keep looking through all my old stuff and just wow I would love to get back into that. But I barely have any free time any more, not like the hours and hours I spent daily on stuff in high school. urgh. last time I tried to reopen killiansicons I flaked out after a few weeks? a month? it didn't last long basically.

anyway, I am more than happy to do paid stuff but urgh I wish I could just take requests every few months or when the mood strikes me? I doubt anyone would stick around at a graphics journal that so rarely updates though.

Welcome new friends from the Yugioh friending meme ♥

I have too much to update on but I'm too lazy to actually focus on it. The highlight of the past few days: I went to work on Monday in Bakura cosplay, minus the wig because I don't have it yet. Sadly, we had all of 20 customers that evening due to it being memorial day, so no one recognized me D:

ALSO. My new, soon-to-be-announced graphics journal should be opening tonight. Or tomorrow. The layout is almost done, I think...I'm about 80% done with coloring the manga pages and I already have the idea sketched out in my head and on paper. I just wish that I hadn't chosen such detailed pages to color. Seriously. I've put hours and hours into two panels >_<

Tomorrow I'm going to Chipotle for FREE BURRITOS!!! and then Joy's Japanimation because it's out that way. I'm tempted to go in cosplay again but I really do need to get that wig...I get paid Friday so that's probably when I'll order it XD

BACK TO PHOTOSHOP~~~~!