blogging — Page 36

Blogging Tips – Daily Drop Cap

March 25, 2012 at 10:24 am by Claudia

unday mornings tend to be the only time I can explore new-to-me blogs. I sit here in the quiet and click one link, which leads me to another, which leads me to another. It reminds me of the time period when I first discovered the world of blogs. Oh my! I was like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t believe I had finally discovered the existence of a world that had been out there all along. Remember those days?

One blog I stumbled upon a while back is The Handmade Home, a lovely design blog written by a young (to me) 30-something blogger. She has a regular feature called The Font Snob Club, where she shares interesting font sources that are free. As you know, I love fonts. Snob is not a word I like to associate with myself, but I suspect I am a bit of Font Snob. I sure appreciate an interesting and unique font and, goodness knows, I’ve changed the fonts on this blog often enough! The most recent edition of The Font Snob Club referenced an amazing site called Daily Drop Cap. Oh my goodness. Jessica Hische, an illustrator and designer, has posted an illustrative initial capital letter daily (since 2009) that you can use – for free – in your personal blog posts. They are not for commercial use.

I’ve used one at the beginning of this post. I also went back and edited my previous post and added one there. I love, love and love (again) them. There are twelve different alphabets and all you have to do is click on the letter you want to use and easy instructions for adding it to your post magically appear.

et’s try another one.

nd one more.

Be still my heart.

Stop by Daily Drop Cap and explore. You’ll be entranced. And be sure to leave a comment thanking Jessica if you use any of her Caps – I just think it’s the polite thing to do.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

Blogging Tips: iPiccy – Photo Editing Site

March 4, 2012 at 10:00 am by Claudia

Have you heard about iPiccy? This photo editing site is a great deal like Picnik, with many of the same features. It’s very user-friendly. It’s in the Beta stage, which simply means it’s still in the testing stage. Let me show you what I did with it yesterday.

Here’s what the site looks like:

By the way, I made that sign using the Painter feature. It’s pretty nifty. How about this one?

You can see Editor, Effects, Text, Retouch and Painter at the top of the window and each one of these has all sorts of individual features that show up on the left side of the screen. The usual things are there, as well as some others that I haven’t fully investigated. The Rotate and Flip tool is like Picnik’s in that you can straighten an image. I use that a great deal on Picnik, especially when I discover that the picture I took is slightly crooked. I haven’t found it anywhere else but on iPiccy.

iPiccy’s fonts are interesting and, for the most part, different than Picnik’s. Variety is the spice of life.

Okay, let’s look at some photos:

I grabbed this one out of my photo library. I played around with it in iPiccy and came up with this:

I played with saturation and something called ‘Bloom’ in the Effects. Just for fun, I added a Drop Shadow Frame. I added a watermark using this pretty text, which is called Quilline Script. I rather like it.

Here’s the same photo edited with Engrave Photo:

Next up is a photo of Ms. Scout:

She’s a photogenic little cutie, isn’t she?

I did the usual: resized the photo, cropped it and used the Cross Process effect, which I love. What’s nice about these effects is that you can control how much or how little of the effect you want. I just wanted a touch of it.

Now, here’s the neat thing: many of these sites are actively soliciting suggestions from all of us. So I sent an email to iPiccy suggesting they think of adding a collage feature because so many bloggers use Picnik’s collage feature to make banners and headers and all sorts of things. Almost immediately – on a Saturday – I received an email from a gentleman at iPiccy. He told me they are working on a collage feature as well as a layering feature right now and they should be adding them in about a week or so! This is great news for those of us who are searching for a way to make collages. I have no idea what this feature will be like or how similar or different it will be to Picnik’s but I sure am looking forward to exploring it. By the way, iPiccy has a Facebook page and they post about all their updates there.

There’s hope, fellow bloggers! There a lot of photo editing sites out there and I’m sure many of them are preparing to jump into the space vacated by Picnik. Every one of them is slightly different. Some are more like Photoshop Elements. Others are more like Picnik. They all want our suggestions.

In other news, the winner of the 3 Prime Suspect mysteries is Susy of The Feathered Nest! Susy, I’m sending an email your way. I need your address to forward to TLC Book Tours.

Have a great Sunday.

Contemplating Copyrights and Privacy on the Internet

March 2, 2012 at 11:52 am by Claudia

It’s the third grey skies day in a row here. Time for the sun, Mother Nature.

So I’ll post a photo of the kitchen on a sunny day, just to remind myself that sunny days do exist.

Ah, yes! That’s what sunny looks like.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about Pinterest and copyright issues. It’s all over the Internet. I was vaguely aware of the discussion but then my friend Z posted about it the other day. She referenced an article (which you can read by clicking on Z’s post) that I find very troubling. Today, I received this post from Amy (I subscribe via email) that had even more links to posts about Pinterest/copyright problems.

I’m not a lawyer. Frankly, the minute I start to read legalese my eyes glaze over. But there are serious issues about pinning other’s images, repinning without linking back to the original source and, to the best of my knowledge, Pinterest’s policy; which basically says they are not liable for any copyright infringement, but we (the pinners) are.

If you pin, I urge you to read the links. I’m not on Pinterest all that much. I have a few pinboards and I see that my photos are being pinned regularly. As to latter, so far I’m flattered. As to the former, I’m going to go back and make sure every image I have pinned is linked back to the original source. If I can’t link it, I’m deleting it. Everyone deserves credit for their work and unfortunately, I see many, many photos on Pinterest that are not linked to the originator.

Who knows? I may even delete my account eventually.

I watched a story on the NBC Nightly News yesterday that discussed Google’s new Privacy Policy, which has also sparked a bit of controversy. That policy went into effect on March 1st. I’ve done what I can to edit my privacy settings but since I use Google for this blog, there’s only so much I can do. I certainly can’t opt out.

I’m not lying awake worrying about any of this, but I do think we have to be careful in this Internet world. Writing a blog automatically puts us in the public eye. As I’ve said before, I’m not comfortable with the push to use Google+. So I don’t want to edit my photos on Google+, which is where we will find many of Picnik’s editing capabilities on April 20th.

Another reason for me to consider a move to WordPress. And I am. I’d like to own the content of this blog. It seems only right that this space that I have carefully crafted over the course of 4 years should be my property.

I must confess, sometimes the Internet seems a bit like the Wild West. And I guess it is. It’s all relatively new, therefore, new issues are popping up every day. All the more reason to exercise a bit of caution and use common sense – we are public in a way that seemed unthinkable a few short years ago.

If you have thoughts about this, please share them. I’d love to learn more about these issues and your insights will be greatly appreciated, as always.

Don’t forget that I’m having a giveaway for the series of 3 Prime Suspect mysteries. Just scroll down one post to my book review and leave a comment. I promise you, there are no other hoops to jump through. I never do that.

Blogging Tips – Daily Drop Cap

Blogging Tips: iPiccy – Photo Editing Site

Contemplating Copyrights and Privacy on the Internet

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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