Spring Cleaning My Website

I had a bout of insomnia the other night and instead of driving myself insane tossing and turning I decided to get up at the crack of dawn and be super productive. Since my major blog overhaul a few months back I've been meaning to iron out a few wrinkles in the design, but it was something I never got around to. The wee hours of the morning seemed like stolen time and perfect for getting such a chore finally finished.

I started out this blog nearly 5 years ago on Blogspot and didn't really have a clue what I was doing. Part of me wishes that I had screen shots over the years to show you the evolution of the design. Last year I made big changes, trying to make the blog fit into a website format as much as possible, making a large amount of information easily accessible to readers. Things like the gallery and badges section continued to annoy me though. So it was a matter of rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck in.

First Banner

Second Banner

Newest Banner

After reading this article on Songbird on how to make a banner for your blog I decided that this was my first port of call. I was happy enough with my buttony banner for ages but when I recently designed a cover photo for my Facebook page I knew the the old one was quite short of the mark. Also lesson number one with marketing is to have your look consistent across the board, which is something I was failing miserable at. I opened the unflattened file for my cover photo and played around with the composition until I was happy with how it looked. I like the addition of the copy book paper for my blog tagline. I also wanted my banner to include a picture of me so that it was clear that this is a personal cottage industry blog. The Polaroids of my work also give people a snapshot of my style so they can quickly decide if it's something they are interested in. I feel this look represents my business far more than the generic buttons I had before. I know that when formerly had this image a my landing page of Facebook it increased my rate of new fans exponentially, so hopefully it will have the same effect on my blog.

I wanted to cut down on the amount of tabs that I had at the top, recently it had grown to two lines of tabs, which I felt was clunky and not aesthetically pleasing. I got rid of the Facebook tab and instead made a button for it on the side. I'm well used to making my own buttons, but if you need a hand Musings of a Housewife has a great tutorial. I prefer to make my own buttons for Facebook and twitter instead of a live feed as I really hate the look of them and they clutter up the sidebar; taking away from the overall design. I continued with the polka dot buttons for my sidebar, punctuating the space with these blocks of blue making it's easier to navigate. I also go rid of some of gimmicky gadgets from this section in an effort to clean it up a bit.

I also thinned out the number of tabs by joining my two 'shop' tabs into one, and linking to my Etsy shops through a collage of images. This has the added benefit of opening the shop in a new window rather than drawing people away from my website. I did the same thing with my gallery tabs. I now have one page from which my clothes, graphics and crafts galleries link. I made collages for these galleries in Photoshop using the same polka dot background, again trying to keep the design consistent.

I added images to my Categories page, so that it's nicer to read than just a plain list of text. Another page that I had a lot of trouble with in this area was Party Badges. It was a big long list of information that I found impossible to break up. But I discovered that you can publish hidden pages, allowing me to have live information which I can link to, but that isn't listed in the tabs at the top. This allows me to have separate badge, mirror, opener and magnet pages, effectively cleaning up that whole section. I linked the pages with images, so that the options are easily identifiable, and because they open in a new window people can flick between them easily to compare prices.

These changes took the bones of a day to get through, but I'm much happier with this tidier look. Earlier last year I wanted to invest a sizable amount of money into getting a website built for me, now I'm glad I was too broke to make this investment, with a fair bit of hard graft I've gotten quite near to what I wanted, but it was for free.

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I Heart Photoshop Brushes

Over the past year I've started to use Photoshop Brushes a lot more. I remember my friend Ken Coleman trying to convince me to use them years ago,I wish I had listened to him sooner, they are a total Godsend.

Basically they are premade images that you can use in photoshop with just one click, a lot of the time they are an outline,which you can use in any colour, and resize to suit your needs. Used very basically, like I have above, they look a little boring, but when you introduce colour, texture, and shading they come to life. The key is to use them with layers, colouring in the background while keeping your brush layer on the top. The images above are just a few examples of a few hundred brushes I downloaded yesterday, I went looking for wedding style brushes, and of course I got distracted by other pretty things.

 Here is an example of an image I made which I use on my cards. The top image is with colour, and shading, made with simple texture brushes. In the second picture you can see the image brushes that I used to make the piece. Combined together to make a nice Olde Worlde piece.

This second piece has a few more layers to it, I separated out the colour and texture layer so you could see what I'm talking about. I used a mix of dripping paint brush with a bristle one. I print out these pictures on glossy paper and use them as embellishments on my cards. It's a lot lot of work at the outset, but I can continue using them, and in the long run it works out more economical then buying card embellishments.

Some good and free brush websites:

All free download

Brusheezy

Brush King

Photoshop Brushes

Senator David Norris-A New Hope

I don't know about you but I was glued to the outcome of Senator David Norris bid to get on the ballot paper. I was sitting here looking at his facebook page clicking refresh every few minutes. Thankfully Dublin gave us the result the nation wanted and the upcoming Presidential election will be a proper democratic one. I was gutted when Senator David Norris initially stepped down from the running due to an ugly smear campaign, with the media dredging up issues that he had answered to years ago. It was so sad to see that our country is blatantly run by a big boys club who didn't want a man to run who stands for change. According to all the surveys there is a huge majority of support for David Norris, a fact that the boys blatantly tried to ignore in blocking him.

Just minutes after I found out the good news I decided I wanted to make a badge to show my support for his campaign. I looked through lots of photos of him online, but none of them were punchy enough. Some of you might know my design work and my interest in red, black and white designs used in political propaganda artwork. This led me to look at the Hope piece made for Obama during his campaign. I spent a few hours on photoshop editing an image of David Norris in the style of this artwork. I've seen a few different pastiches of this image before, I've no idea how they did them, if there is some quick filter to use, if there is I don't know about it. Anyhow a couple of hours later I was finished my image, I made a full poster, and then also a badge design. You are more than welcome to use the poster image on your websites/blogs/facebook to show your support for the Senators campaign(just please credit me with a link back to this website if you use it). I have also listed the badge in my etsy shop here.

Last night it was pointed out to me on Twitter that my design might be misconstrued as someone trying to cash in on David Norris' success. I was a little shocked by this suggestion , but when I stepped aside from my enthusiasm and looked at it objectively I could see how someone could misunderstand my intentions. This image was made in a moment of excitement, and genuine pride in a man that symbolises change and hope for this country, something most of us have not felt in a very long time. I responded in the way that is natural to me, to make an artwork. Since receiving the questioning tweet(s) I have contacted the Senator David Norris team asking them for permission, stating that the listing will be removed if they have any issue with it. I also offered the use of the poster for free, which I've also offered to all of you guys too.