Photostacker Wannabe

I love the look that you can achieve with the Photostacker screensaver on Macs.  There's also a free shareware program you can download that will replicate the effect on your PC.  I'm a PC girl - for now. Always have been since most of corporate America uses them.  And I've always worked with and in corporate America.  Now that I've been fully freelance for five and a half years - and it looks as though that status is going to stick, even after the boys are in school, I'm thinking it might be time to switch to my first choice - a Mac.  I've been eyeing one for several months, and a little birdie told me that I might be getting one for Christmas.  We'll have to see if I can be a good girl the rest of the year and maybe Santa will bring me something wonderful.

Meanwhile, in switching the look of my blog, I wanted to duplicate the effect of Photostacker in my new header.  Whadd'ya think?  A summer full of fun photos and a half-hour in Photoshop, and voila - a new header that makes me happy everytime I look at it.  I've been playing with some animation, too.  So those photos might rotate in a few weeks.  For now, the static Polaroids make me smile.

NaNoWriMo Countdown Begins

25 days to NaNoWriMo.

Work by the numbers between today and November 1:

• 5 interviews for columns
• 4 weekly columns
• 2 web design completions
• 2 conference calls
• 1 blog template redesign
• 1 business card design process
• 1 business papers design (letterhead, b-cards, etc.)
• 1 board meeting
• 1 newsletter design
• 1 newsletter edit/design
• 1 scientific article with 4 interviews
• 1 PowerPoint template design

Think that's it! Not even going to make a list of all of the personal things I need to accomplish - since that's supposed to be my full-time job.  Stay-at-home mom has a whole new definition in the 21st century!

Create your own Blogger Favicon

Just figured out how to create and upload my own favicon.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, it's the tiny "logo" that appears next to the address in your web browser window. 

Here's my new one.  Pretty simple, but it fits with the new web theme that I have going on.

Follow the steps below to create your own.

1) Open a new document in Photoshop, Illustrator (or whatever design program you use.)  I created a document that was 130 pixels x 130 pixels at 72 dpi.

2) Create your favicon to fit within those dimensions.

3) Save it as a JPG

4) Go to http://www.iconj.com/ 

5) Create a free account at IconJ - this site will convert your JPG, GIF or PNG to the ICO format and host the graphic for free.

6) Upload your JPG - just as you would upload photos to Flickr or Photobucket and save.

7) Click on "My Account" in IconJ

8) Under "Account Profile" click on "My Favicon Code"

9) Copy the code in the "My Dynamic Favicon Code:" box

10) Login to your blogger account

11) Click "Layout"; on the Layout tab, click "Edit HTML"

12) You will want to place the code that you copied from IconJ directly above the closing of your blogger header.  You can quickly locate this by pressing Ctrl-F and typing "/head" into the search box (without the quotation marks).  This will highlight the closing header code in your blog's html.

13) Paste the IconJ code into the html box directly above this line.

14) Save your Template

15) Open your blog in a new window, and your new Favicon should appear.

Good luck!

Blogger Designs by Me

In designing a new blog for my brother, I was inspired to update my own template. The sock puppets were fun, but I wanted a more refined look. Sort of the mood that I've been recently. So here it is. Let me know what you think.

Here's a look at my brother's new template, too. Click here for a look at the real thing.:

I've been working on quite a few design projects recently: blog templates, logo designs and web design. I'll post some samples soon.