Category Archives: blog love

Interweb Treasures Tuesday {v11}

Interweb treasures Tuesday

Interweb Treasures Tuesday is a weekly(ish) feature where I dig up my favorite links on art, design, photography, and anything else quirky or funny that catches my eye. Here’s the best of what’s been inspiring me lately.

Have you ever heard the greatest speech ever made?

Harry Potter, re-edited as a cheesy teen comedy? Awesome.

WordPress plugins 101 (via Eef, etc) I wish I’d come across this when I was first building my site.

Seven Steps to Creating a Project that Matters (via High Existence)

Stop being afraid. Go ahead and open the box.

Take a few minutes and ask yourself these 18 Thought Provoking Questions.

Somehow it took me until yesterday to discover the art of Megan Majewski. Why, hello there new art crush.

In the last year or two, I’ve developed a newfound love of gin. It makes me feel oddly grown up. Check out this mint gin fizz recipe. Yum.

Here’s some helpful advice for tightening up your writing. Helpful for those of us who get wordy sometimes.

Heya font junkies, here’s 75 Professional free fonts from 2012. You’re welcome.

 

Indie Gift Box {August participant}

I’ve you’re a regular reader, you might have noticed a new button in the right-hand side bar that says “Indie Gift Box”.  You might have even wondered what it’s all about.  Never fear…I’m here to explain.

Indie Gift Box is a new company started by Erin of Eef, etc. which is dedicated to promoting independent artists and small businesses! Each month, they curate great items from independent artists and small businesses, then organize them into themed boxes that you can purchase. The goal is to help you discover new artists and companies, and to help those artists and companies grow their businesses. In August, I’ll be one of the Indie Gift Box contributors!

Check back in the next few weeks for details, and for the release date of the August boxes!

Interweb Treasure Tuesday {v9}

Interweb treasures Tuesday

Happy Tuesday! This week’s treasures are a little light, as the weather here has been absolutely gorgeous, which means I’ve spent very little time discovering cool things on the computer. Oh well, life is for living right?

Here’s a few cool links that I came across this week:

I love this skeptical but hopeful post from Caiti on Stratejoy about manifesting your dreams.

Sometimes you just have to hold your head high and tell the world why you’re awesome. This post on RevolutionizeHer explains why.

Speaking of manifesting, I wish I wish I wish I was able to attend this retreat. Sounds like a dream.

This company will make your kid’s drawing into a stuffed animal. How cool is that?

Interweb Treasure Tuesday {v8}

Interweb treasures Tuesday

I discovered this awesome shop via Sneak Peeq. Lineposters.com creates graphic posters of the transit systems in tons of different cities. I dropped the ball and missed the end of the sale, but I might still shell out the extra money for the Chicago poster, because it’s that cool.

There’s a lot of weirdness involved with being the mom of a toddler. Sometimes it’s pretty funny. Sage advice…don’t bite your friends!

Check out this amazing artist I discovered via the Redbubble blog!

Another great tutorial from Pugly Pixel about replacing backgrounds in Photoshop!

Here’s a really inspiring post from Silly Grrl about the steps she took to quit her day job and follow her dreams. A great read for anyone dreaming of setting off on their own path.

screen shot of new site design

Heyyyyyyyy good looking {site re-branding!}

Notice anything different?

After a couple of weeks playing around with the layout in Photoshop, I finally have my new design up! As much as I liked my old design, it was feeling a little stale. I wanted something new, fresh, and crisp. Since so much of the artwork I post is colorful, I wanted something relatively simple, that didn’t compete with the art for attention. On the other hand, I still wanted something that was fun, my style, and spoke to the kind of work I do. Right now I love this design. I was a little worried that it was going to take forever to actually implement it in WordPress, but my CSS skills must have improved over the last year, because I made the changes in about 15 minutes without any kind of disasters, tears, or swearing (I feel like I deserve a gold star, or at least a cookie).

old header design

screen shot of new site design

Here’s what’s new and exciting:

  • New header design…reminiscent of the old header, but simpler and cleaner
  • New social media links, including a link to follow me on Instagram!
  • An actual photo of me! I’m known for not liking to get my picture taken and really disliking most pictures of myself, so we’ll see how long this actually stays up for.
  • I replaced the fancy rollover buttons in the sidebar with some simple gray category buttons. I couldn’t believe I got rid of them after all the effort it took to figure them out, but after looking at them all the time they were feeling too big and clunky, and the novelty had worn off
  • New font in my sidebar widgets and new link colors (hellooooo turquoise, I love you!)
  • I got rid of the Alice in Wonderland quote on the footer, and replaced it with my Twitter feed, category links, and recent posts
  • Changed the background

screen shot of my design process

Nothing too crazy, but it feels good to give the site a little makeover. I hope you like it too!

Interweb Treasures Tuesday {v5}

The Oatmeal explains how to get more likes on Facebook.

Becka explains how to avoid getting caught up in the comparison trap.

Joy the Baker shares some great post ideas for when you’re feeling stuck.

Check out these animals who are extremely disappointed in you. Hang your head in shame. Then giggle.

Leslie Myrick shares some awesome finds in the world of free fonts.

Check out this amazing video about the scale of the known universe.

The colors in this artwork are A-MAZ-ING!

Interweb Treasures Tuesday {v4}

Great article on creativity from one of my very favorite artists, Peter Westermann

How to get some control over the depth of field in your photos.

A great article from Leslie Myrick about ignoring the “MUSTS” of blogging and doing what YOU want to do

This empanada recipe sounds AMAZING!

I’m dying to try taking photos of star trails. This article on night sky photography tips is a great start.

There’s a lot of food for thought in this article about why you should never get a job.

I’m not normally a pink sorta girl. But this color palette? Wow!

Elsie from A Beautiful Mess gives some advice on what not to do when taking photos.

My weakness for chai borders on obsession. Imagine my excitement when I saw this recipe for chai spiced apple crumble on Tenpenny Splendid!

Viva La Violette has been running a great series on SEO bootcamp for bloggers.

 

 

 

Interweb Treasures Tuesday {v3}

Polish artist Calabarte makes some of the most gorgeous lamps I’ve ever seen!

Andy Gilmore’s geometric artwork is absolutely amazing!

Have some fun playing with this big rainbow colored blob. Yes, you read that right.

What!?!? White Rabbit ring!?!? Be still, my heart!

I love when people make art out of unexpected materials. Like Rubix Cubes.

I’m a sucker for surrealism. Look at these beautiful paintings by Vladimir Kush.

Do you love free fonts as much as I do? Then look here and here.

I wish I had every single one of these star trail photos hanging on my walls (I settled with making the first one my desktop background). Stunning.

Wow. I never made anything half this cool out of Legos.

Audrey Kawasaki’s artwork is beyond gorgeous.

I struggle with simplicity in design sometimes. Viktor Hertz nails it with these pictogram music posters.

Hipster dogs. ‘Nuff said.

Check out the amazing pictures this guy made by walking around in the snow.

Interweb Treasure Tuesday {v2}

Here are some of the most interesting places and spaces that I discovered over the past few weeks.

Ever since I was little I’ve been completely fascinated with kaleidoscopes. In middle school I decided that I wanted to name my future business “The Kaleidoscope Eye” but it turns out that hundreds of other people had the same idea before me. Oh well. This post explains how kaleidoscopes are made and how they work.

I discovered these surrealist paintings by Mihai Criste via My Modern Metropolis and they are AMAZING! Drool-worthy and beautiful and breathing magic into everyday objects and scenery…check them out

What are the odds of you coming into existence? If you’re an info-graphic junkie like me, this just might blow your mind.

My love for info-graphics is boundless…and I hit the design info-graphic nerd jackpot right—-> here

Muppets fan art. Need I say more? I didn’t think so.

0001 Project : Using his computer, photographer and graphic designer Nick Schlax creates a stunningly intricate and beautiful fractal design every day for a year.

Art Student Owl freaking rocks my socks. It’s funny because it’s true!

inter-web treasures Tuesday

I gather links the way some girls collect shoes (me…I wear the same beat up pair of Chucks or Vans pretty much every day – but don’t tell because they could revoke my Girl Card for such transgressions ). This post was actually all set and schedule to go for LAST Tuesday, but WordPress ate it. No joke. I logged in at it was completely gone. Bad, BAD WordPress! Luckily I have a good memory…

Here are some of the most interesting links I’ve gathered over the last few weeks:

I used to have a huge obsession with Flipz. Now that they’re practically impossible to find, these white chocolate covered pretzels on Shutterbean might just inspire me to make my own.

When I was a kid having a party at Showbiz Pizza (anyone remember that? Before it became Chuck E Cheese?) was pretty cool. This punk rock themed 6th birthday party blows that out of the water. Coolest mom of the year award goes to Annie, from Paint the Moon…

In our house live a couple of hardcore caffeine addicts. I pretty much told my boyfriend that we simply cannot continue in life without this In Caffeine We Trust poster hanging on our kitchen wall.

As a girl who loves both Salvador Dali and Alice in Wonderland, my head almost exploded when I got a look at these illustrations.

One of my friends from High School started an awesome cooking blog and it makes me drool. Check out her recipe for Pecan Crusted Pork Pinwheels.

I love this blog. She has such an amazing drawing style! It seems like tattoo artists are always so good with watercolors.

Learning the hot keys in Photoshop can be a daunting task. Pugly Pixel comes to the rescue with these great Photoshop shortcut flashcards.

Life as an Artistpreneur had this great post For Everyone Not Yet Doing What They Love a while ago about lighting a fire and getting yourself going on the road to your dreams.