Hey there!

If you’re here, you’re noticing something very, very different is going on with my layout! Yea!!

Again, special thanks to Lisa. This is the first of a couple different and user-changeable looks for my blog. The others will be up at a later time.

Be patient with me, I still have some work to do to get things in order. I’ll be transferring as many of the comments over as I can. I also have to wade through 400 entries and categorize them so that you can view my entries by category (see the left sidebar, you can select a category and just those entries will appear!). Most of my images need to be reduced, they’ll be hanging over the edges until I get that done.

Just some minor tweaking here and there!

Have a look around! A bunch of new features await your left-click! 😉

I just have to share this gal with you guys. I mentioned Lisa, she’s the gal taking the reins on revamping my blog layout and making the functionality SO MUCH better. She is also the gal I’m painting Talis & Meowface for. We’re trading services, which is awesome in itself!

You know how frustrated I am with Blogger, well I’ve installed WordPress and it’s a whole new coding language to me. I am the type who would sit and fiddle with learning the code, and I knew that if I did that I would not finish my commissions for everyone in time for the Holidays, so she graciously took over my headache so that I could get my butt back into the studio! THANK YOU, Lisa!!

I was blogsurfing lastnight, have you ever done that? You must! Here’s a great place to start, Lisa’s design samples. Have a look at the awesome graphic & coding talents this girl has. Pay special attention to the features on each of the blogs you look at. Layout aside, there are so many neat features that turn each blog into its own information headquarters. You can search each blog within itself for things you remember but can’t find thru dated archives. A calendar to read up from your last visit. A list of referring websites. SOooOOoo many things that I didn’t even realize I was missing until I stumbled across her website!

I know it can be time consuming, but it’s fun and informative, so surf those blogs! And if you have one, tell me where I can find you if I haven’t already. If you don’t have one, drop Lisa a note; her whole biz is hosting and designing blogs for folks! She’s awesome!!

This one is for all of my readers. I need your input!! In putting together a new blog layout, I am trying to make a decision based on “irritation factors”. Of course I want everyone to love their stay here in my little slice of the web, so I am going to try to base my design/layout with everyone in mind.

Your feedback is very important to me! Leave an anonymous comment if you wish, or just e-mail me, either way is great!!

On to the question.

My screen resolution is 1024×768. This seems to be the most popular screen size, BUT. I have a handful of folks using other resolutions, 800×600 being my biggest concern. If I design my site to fit 1024×768, smaller resolution users will have to scroll over to the right to view all of the content. Is that extremely irritating? On a scale of 1-10, how irritating is it? Would it cause you to never want to come back?

Right now about 15% of my viewers are on 800×600. That leaves a good 85% who are on 1024×768 or larger.

I know it’s a wierd technical question, but I do need your input. Personally, I would like to be able to display even larger images in my entries, and to do that I need to make that column wider, which makes things kinda wonky for some folks.

Ok your turn to speak up! Bring it on!! (Even if you don’t care either way, just say so, mkay?) THANK YOU!!!

I’m going to get on the treadmill and get ready to start my day! I’ll update when I start painting. 😀

Whew! I’m sitting down!

As promised, here’s the second work in progress of Bailey’s portrait. ‘Auntie M’ recommended red, so red it is! 😉

Just as FYI, the holiday gift basket giveaway has ended and the winner has been contacted. If we don’t hear back within 3 days, the runner-up will get the prize! I’m hoping to be able to send out an announcement when we hear back, and then of course everyone who entered will get special pricing on custom portraits for a designated time. (After the holidays, sorry! I’m booked right now!)

I continued to “de-clutter” today, and you know when all the clutter is gone, it just looks so bare? Yea. Well I solved that problem this afternoon. LOL! Leave it to me, never an un-creative moment in my life. Here’s what I created this afternoon…

I wanted some color! It was all white back there behind those shelves. Blah. And blah is not allowed in my house. ;P~

Now I’ve got some webdesigning stuff to do tonight, so I will catch up with you tomorrow! Have a great evening!!!

I had one too many problems today with blogger.com publishing my entries et al.. so I installed a new blogging system on my server! YAH! It only took a minute to install it, but getting everything set up (template, entries, archives) is going to take a while. I’ll just do a little bit each day and when it’s ready to go you’ll see some slight but very cool changes to my blog.

Perks:
– Smileys!
– you don’t need an account to post a comment.
– a search tool to search just my blog archives.
– post categories.
You can see where I’m going with this…up up and away!!

I’ll let you know when it’s far enough along for you to have a peek. I am HOPING I don’t need to do an address change, and will do everything in my power to make it work at this location! If not, I’ll do a reroute on my end so you don’t have to change your link if you’ve got me linked. It’s kinda like moving your office from one end of town to another, but staying in the same building. heh! ;D

Sorry for the temporary outage, folks. My site went down probably shortly after midnight, obviously I got everything fixed and I’m up and running again!

I’ll be working on Carly Sue off cam today. I’ll post the final portrait when it’s ready.

Have a great day!

Mom’s hard drive crashed on her lastnight, so of course that put me in panic mode.

We had a good day today, I took the girls to the mall and we wandered around, had lunch, bought some dollies and went to Grandma’s house. We hung out this evening, and now they’re tucked in and I’m moving all of my art files to CD! I had been planning on doing it for a few weeks, and when mom said hers crashed and she can’t access anything on it, it inspired me to get my stuff done. 😉

So for all of you with valuables on your hard drives, back ’em up!!

I’m not sure what we’ll be doing tomorrow yet, but I’ll let ya know.

Have a great night!
xoxoxox

Ssh don’t tell anyone else, but I changed my blog again. hehe!

I hope this is easier for you guys, I received some feedback that scrolling the outside frame to get further down on the inside frame was frustrating – and I have to admit I was frustrated too! So voila, shrunk it down, now hopefully you will not be having to do that! 🙂 Ok ok I’m going to go paint now!

P.S. That’s another zoo pic from yesterday’s trip. They were talking to eachother!

What a great week this has been!!!

No pics for you at the moment, sorry. It’s too early and I know nobody wants to see me in my new fancy Victory North Iraq baseball cap. 😉

I made a “teenie” revision to my blog layout, could you tell? You likey the new style? I just love letting my brain get lost in html code, hehe. I’m really getting the hang of this CSS-thang too, so once I revamp the blog a few more times I’ll be able to dig into the site layout (again, lol) and get it the way I really want it! Chant with me… “PHP! PHP! PHP!” (Erikie you know what I’m talking about!)

I am going to work on my order info page today. I swear. Really I am. I will link you when I’m finished, so no peeking! I’m going to have a very cool surprise for everyone too, just in time for Christmas portrait orders! (Was that enough of a hint?)

Ok enough of the procrastinating, I’ve gotta get on the ball!

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE! Enjoy!
xoxoxoxoxo

p.s. I’m still procrastinating, but we’ve been productive! Here’s a piccy for you!!! 😀