Thank you to the person who found my site through the following keyphrase: ‘do schnauzers slobber?’  That made my day!!

  asides

  Funny

I designed my Grandmother’s church a website today… I found it difficult to design something that wasn’t too wordpress-y. It is powered by wordpress though! (That way my Mum can add pages, as she is well versed with WP.) And still looks too bloggy in my opinion. Want to have a look? I have decided it is my ‘get into heaven free card.’

  asides

  Web Design

I have made a lot of changes to the stylesheet today. Does the site feel a bit less … cluttered?

  asides

  Updates

Just a quick post to let you know I have uploaded some lovely sheets of A4 paper, which contain journaling tags for people to print off, and use for free in their scrapbooks.

They are all high resolution, and I created them at 300 dpi. So, they should look really nice once printed off. So, visit the scrapbooking freebies page, and snag yourself some of my lovely journal tags for free!

If you save these, print them off and use them in your scrapbook, or any other crafty work - please let me know, and if you send me in a picture, I will feature it in my blog!

  Hobbies and Crafts, Resources

  Digital Scrapbooking, freebies, Resources, Scrapbooking

Click For Live Preview? | Download Now?

This is officially the first widget enabled wordpress theme I have ever released.
You are free to edit this in anyway you like, as long as my link remains in the footer.

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  Free Wordpress Themes

  Free Wordpress Themes, freebies, wordpress

I absolutely love deviantArt. I haven’t really got much to add on there, because I’m not as creative as I’d like to be, but nevertheless, it is still one of my favorite sites for inspiration and to look at quality art.

If you put aside some of the crap, (such as the emo kids putting up pictures of their friends and forgetting that dA is not myspace) you can find some quality photographs and website designs.

I decided that, (with the permission of the artists), I’d like to share some of this wonderful art with you.

So for part one I will be sharing my three favorite website designs.

1. Douglas-Studione - Water Side Surf Shop : -

Read The Rest of This Post? »

  Web Design

  Inspiration, Web Design

This is another quick and simple Illustrator tutorial - View the last flower tutorial?

This is aimed at people like me who do not have a lot of experience will Illustrator.  The simple flower I’ve drawn here could be used for anything like background images, or to create scrapbooking embellishments out of.

Stage: Beginner
Time: About 5 Minutes.

What you will be learning to draw:

Create a new document, and draw and using the polygon tool, draw a polygon. I draw a 6 sided one. (As Below:) Ensure that it has a fill. I chose a nice bright orange colour!

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  Illustrator

  flower, tutorial

Wowee! I have found yet another great free icon website.

  asides

  freebies, Icon

I’ve had some time off work recently, and whilst I’ve had a spare minute, or nothing better to do, I spent it looking around the web: I browsed CSS galleries, and looked through web designer’s portfolios at the sites they had designed for both inspiration and just for something to do.

I noticed that a lot of people are using a wooden grain as a background on their blogs and websites.

It seems to be quite popular on the ol’ t’internet these days.

I think that the following five websites I have chosen using the ‘wood grain style background’ have certain additional qualities which make them easy to use, clear, simple and generally well designed.

So I present to you: Carly’s Top 5 Websites, Featuring The Wooden Background.

1. Shape Shed - http://shapeshed.com

This (and the next) website uses the wood as a repeating background, which makes a nice change from stripes, and other generic patterns. I used to visit this site a lot when I first installed Illustrator, as I liked the tutorials, and found them very useful. The design is clean, simple and you are not presented with information overkill - the designer has a lot of information to present, but it’s all in easy-to-read sections.

2. Floopy.nu - http://floopy.nu

I found this site after perusing the perfection web gallery, and clicked on it straight away. I love everything, from the rounded corners to the colours used. For SEO purposes I would have changed the words on the tabs at the top from images, to text, and I’d add the links again in the footer at the bottom. It just increases chances of googlebot crawling through your entire site. There is some great content on this site too, from the desktop backgrounds to articles about dogs, and puppies.

3. Dairien.com- http://www.dairien.com

This time a darker stain on the wood! This, and the following sites move from using the wood as a background, to using it as a header. I think I found this website in a CSS web gallery whilst looking around for inspiration. This site implements a grid system, which works very well. In fact, the site is so well presented instead of worrying what to look at first, I just want to stay for ages, and look at everything. For some reason, I love the form at the bottom of every page.

4. Third and Grand - http://thirdandgrand.com

Third and Grand boast that they create amazing websites. I have to 100% agree with them. I cannot even do this site justice by describing all of the fantastic design features: all I can suggest is you visit it and look for yourself. I like the use of colour, and like how to wooden panel is used across the top for navigation purposes.

5. Enrichmint - http://enrichmint.com

I am about 100% sure that this site is owned and maintained by the above company. The design is of the same high quality. I like how to wood is larger in this header, but it isn’t obtrusive and ‘in your face.’ I adore the site name and tagline too! I admire how every header (excluding the header image) is text, and how this must help in terms of Search Engine Optimisation.

Feeling Inspired?

So, you have just seen five lovely designs, all featuring the popular ‘wood’ theme. Each site is easy to read, and does not overload the visitor with information. Perhaps you would like to download a wood grain for yourself, and try to replicate a similar design?

Want To Download Dark Wood Grain For Your Website: ~zygat3r provides one here, on deviantArt.

Update: Bittbox offers lots of hi-res wood texture photographs for use on your website.

Also: Try searching for wood, or woodgrain on http://www.sxc.hu for free images. I found quite a few good ones when I had a look earlier!!

  List, Resources, Web Design

  design, Inspiration, Resources, Web Design, website

Free Icons and Graphics - I discovered this site today.  Everything is 100% free, and bloody lovely!  I nabbed myself some backgrounds, and some icons.  Great stuff!

  asides

  design, freebies, website

Spring has sprung; it’s officially the season of blooming buds, blossom, flowers, and sheep!

So, in celebration, I’ve scoured the web and compiled a list of five different illustrator tutorials for drawing simple flowers.

These tutorials vary from using the rotation tool, the direct selection tool, many of the shape tools and the gradient tools. So, if you’re looking to learn something new today, and want to brush up on your basic illustrator skills, I suggest that you give the following simple flower tutorials a go.

1. N Design Studio - Stylish Vector Flower
Learn how to recreate the stunning flower (Above).
This tutorial will not only show you how to replicate this elegant flower, but will further teach you how to use the blend tool.
View Stylish Vector Flower Tutorial?

2. Vecpix - Using Distortion To Transform A Star Into A Flower
Using the basic adobe illustrator tools, turn two stars and a circle into a lovely Hawaiian-style flower. If you are a beginner, this tutorial will help you get to grips with some of illustrator’s basic tools, and learn your way around the palettes.
View Star To Flower Tutorial?

3. Lula Louise - Illustrator Flowers Tutorial
This flower tutorial focuses on using the circle tool, and editing the anchor points. I like the patterns it produces, and think that if you reproduced the effect, more then once and applied a good colour scheme, this type of flower could look great on a background.
View Illustrator Flowers Tutorial?

4. DX-XeL - Polygon Flower Tutorial
This tutorial is a little more advanced, but it will let you practice some new skills! You start off with another shape, this time the polygon tool.
View Polygon to Flower Tutorial?

5. Twisted Barfly- Simple Rotation Flower Tutorial
I’m a little bit biased with this tutorial, seeing as I wrote it. So naturally, I think it’s the best. Well, ok there are many cooler tutorials out there, but I still think you should give this a go, and get used to illustrator’s rotation tool.
Visit Simple Rotation Flower Tutorial?

  Illustrator, Resources

  flower, Illustrator, Resources, simple

Sunny Disposition is a wordpress based website that I have hosted, designed, conbobumalated and oosyflobsited for a lovely lady (who is in my family), called Loopiloop.  That’s not her real name, …I think…

I’ve been very busy designing it all day today. I am very impressed with my creation, and am going to actually modify the basic template further now, and perhaps offer it as a free wordpress theme for download…?

Well, sunny-disposition.net is not quite ready in terms of content, there is a blog entry or two, and a few pages live at the moment, but there is so much more to come.  But please do go and visit!

The site currently features a Flickr photostream running through the header, a picture in the header that ‘Loopiloop’ took herself, plus many more little bits and bobs that took me AGES to do! Hahaa…

I still want to add some conditional tags, to display all the related posts when you are viewing a ‘full’ permalinked post.

Please visit and let me, and ‘Loopiloop’ know what you think of the site. Oh, and if you’re too lazy to click through, here is a preview:

  All About Me

  sunny disposition, wordpress

If you own a blog or a website you should be interested in Search Engine Optimisation. It is a smart idea to learn the basics (for example: 1,2,3) and get into good habits. This in turn will bring you more visitors in the long run.

So, once equipped with the knowledge of the significance of H1 tags, alt text, clean code and linking, you might need some extra resources to help you along the way.

1. SEO Quake Firefox Add On: This is a handy good all-round tool you can install into Firefox. My favorite SEO function of SEO Quake is the ‘line through no-follow and no-index links‘ tool. Once you’ve installed SEO Quake, you can right click the icon at the bottom of the browser and select this option. You will then be able to see who does and does not allow Google bots to crawl to other sites from theirs.
Good Features: Keyword density of page tool, many tools that check pagerank, backlinks etc of the page you are looking at.
Bad Points: It can make your browsing experience a bit messy if you have all the tools and toolbars turned on. Perhaps disable them all until you need one?

2. Know Your Competition, Know Them Well: Compete.com offers tools which provide both search and site analytics for a lot of websites. It claims to be ‘powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry.‘
To put it simply, you type the URLs of the sites you are competing against (perhaps a couple of your friends blogs, or if you own a business you can add websites specialising in your area) and you can then view comprehensive statistics about how they get traffic, how much of it they get and their best performing keywords.
Good Features: You are able to find out what works for other sites. You get three free credits when you register for the site, and can download three different reports.
Bad Features: To download any more than three full reports you need to pay. Might be worth it if you are a business.

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  Search Engine Optimisation

  firefox, Resources, SEO, social bookmarking, wordpress

Finally - I have finished this theme.  I now am going to work on my content.

I have already updated my ‘About Carly‘ and ‘About Twisted Barfly‘ pages.

So, after a few weeks of minimal colour, I decided that I wanted to try and blind everybody online, and created this theme.  I cannot decide on a name - it’s between: Twisted Barfly on Acid, and Carly’s Colourful Theme.

Please let me know if you experience any problems, or pages that look shite.

Oh, and if I do blind you - please don’t sue me!

So, now I’ve been tagged by Starlet and have to do this ‘Birth Month’ quiz thing from her website.   But you are supposed to link to 12 people, but I don’t really know 12 people online, so If you’d like to find out what your birth month result will be - you can find the full thing here on Starlet’s Blog.  (EG: tag yourself…hehe)

Now:

JULY: Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation. Easily consoled. Honest. Concerned about people’s feelings. Tactful. Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets. Dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardworking. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Likes to be quiet. Homely person. Waits for friends. Never looks for friends. Not aggressive unless provoked. Prone to having stomach and dieting problems. Loves to be loved. Easily hurt but takes long to recover.

I have to agree with pretty much everything really.  Except ‘no difficulties in studying‘ - my University lecturers would have something to say about that I think.

  All About Me, Updates

  quiz, theme, Twisted Barfly, Updates, wordpress

Sorry if everything looks wonky.

I’m upgrading to wordpress 2.5 and whilst I’m at it - I’m re-themeing my website.

I can assure you this site will be back to normal at some point today.

  Twisted Barfly, Updates

  Twisted Barfly, upgrade, wordpress

Hello.  Well first things first, my Dad passed away last Sunday, after a 15 hour struggle with his breathing, and a three year battle with Cancer.

My brother, mum and I had spent pretty much 4 days at the hospital, and we all slept at the hospital.  My brother’s girlfriend Nat was with us a lot of the time, and she helped out so much from making up cups of tea, to returning home and looking after our doggies.   So a massive, massive thank you to her.

Because my Dad died from Mesothelioma Cancer (a type of Cancer caused by Asbestos) there are a lot of laws and procedures which will affect what happens next.  For example, it is the law that sufferers of industrial diseases must have a post mortem and an inquest for claims and insurance purposes.  To cut a long story short - my Mum has got her lawyer to ensure our Dad does not need to have a post mortem, though we will still have to have the inquest.  So the funeral won’t be for two weeks, and we are not able to have any death certificates until after the inquest.

To top all that off, on the Monday we got a phone call that night asking if at 4.00pm the previous day my Dad had made a penny transaction to the carphone warehouse on his credit card.  Well my Dad died at 4.21pm so it was highly unlikely he had, and when we told the bank this, they cancelled the card. Apparently, someone was trying to clone the card, and the penny transaction is meant to be a ‘test’ to check if the card works.  Bastards!  How dare they try to steal my Dad’s money as he lay dying?  It’s despicable.

I don’t like to dwell on this sad stuff for too long, and therefore haven’t gone into all the details here, but my Dad died with his family all around him, and we hugged him right up until his last breath.

The worst thing for me is that it hasn’t even sunk in.  I got a plate out for my Dad when I cooked dinner the other night and if I’m on my own and the house phone rings, I jump up to get it - as I think it might be him calling from hospital.  I think it’ll sink in after the funeral.

Now, to lighten the mood, and to try and cheer you up after my sad and depressing story, I’ll let you in to a secret.  I think today I might update my version of WordPress, and perhaps update this layout too.

I still have a lot of content to add, but the problem is reading my scrawling handwriting and typing it up into something legible!  So if the mood takes me, I’ll even look into adding some new stuff today.

  All About Me, Updates

  cancer, Dad, mesothelioma, wordpress