Birdcage Creative

Adult T-shirt Colours

2011-12-12T12:50:00.002Z

See the picture below for the colours I can offer adult t-shirts in (click to see a larger version). I can apply your design in a choice of colour(s) too, including plain, metallic and glittery.

I take orders for one-offs (without any set-up fees) or for larger quantities, each can be a different colour/design colour too. Perfect for sports teams, company promotion, staff uniforms or even just casual wear.

Other types of items are available including hooded tops (see here for colours: hooded top colours) and childrens t-shirts.

For more information just get in touch: contact@birdcagecreative.co.uk

Week 8 - Custom birthday card

2011-10-20T14:50:00.000+01:00

Just a short one this week, thought I'd show a few pictures of a card I made recently for the birthday of one of the children in my martial arts school. I thought I'd have a go at making a spinning card i.e. I wanted the figure to spin when taken out the envelope.

To do this the cutout black silhouette is in two identical layers, between which is sandwiched a thread. The ends of the thread are secured to the front of the card above and below the cutout window (the front is doubled layered too to give a neater final appearance with no loose ends being visible). The figure could then be "wound up" before being put in the envelope so that when it was taken out it would spin within the window.

The design itself I did in illustrator and cut out using my vinyl cutting machine, it takes a few passes to cut through heavy card and usually needs me to finish it off by hand too. I'm trying to think of other designs I could use for the spinning insert now, any suggestions welcome!

Week 7 - Ten of the best creative infographics

2011-09-03T21:36:00.000+01:00

I've always been drawn to infographics, a discipline which involves conveying information, data or knowledge in graphical form. Infographics take many forms, from simple road signs and pie charts to timelines, maps and diagrams which show complex relationships and interations between the data being examined. A good infographic makes the most complex information easier to understand, and a great infographic, in my opinion, not only does this but also manages to present it in a visually appealing, creative manner.

In that vein, here, in no particular order, are ten great infographics. They all contain quite a bit of information so it's well worth clicking on them to see the detail.

The Very, Very Many Varieties of Beer
Links between the major styles of beer along with examples of each type and glassware recommendations
Author: Pop Chart Lab

Underskin
Tracing the routes of the systems of the human body
Author: Sam Loman

Periodic Table of Typefaces
Author: Cam Wilde

The Apple Tree
A visual history of Apple products
Author: Mike Vasilev

Geological Time Spiral
Showing the time scale of the evolution of life on earth
Author: Joseph Graham, William Newman, and John Stacy

Waiting Time
Infographic detailing time spent waiting in one week
Author: Ruth Tsang

Trustworthiness of Beards
Judging the trustworthiness of a person based strictly on beard style
Author: Matt Macinerney

Burning man Festival
The history of the festival, from it's days as a simple gathering on a beach to the present.
Author: Flint Hahn

50 Years of Space Exploration
Traces over 200 space missions
Author: Sean McNaughton, National Geographic & Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics

Noob Guide to Online Marketing
A very comprehensive 6-month action plan for marketing your business online
Author: Oli Gardner

Week 6 - Personalised gift tags

2011-08-08T14:23:00.002+01:00

I offer a free personalised gift tag service with my items, so far not too many people have taken me up on this offer, maybe as it's not something I've promoted too much, just detailing it in the item's description where it could be easily overlooked. I've had great feedback from the ones I have made so I thought I'd share with you some pictures of the process of making the tags and an example of the finished item.

I didn't want to just do simple paper tags as I wanted something a bit more substantial so I use a special type of plastic that you shrinks when heated to give a nice, solid tag. You can draw or print on the plastic and as the material shrinks so does the applied design, the hard part is working out how large to make the original print so it gives you the right size when it's been shrunk down. I use this same material to make other things like name badges, zipper pulls for hoodies and bags and small charms. It's pretty versatile.

This particular order was for a lady who wanted a couple of sets of cufflinks to give as a gift to her husband and his brother as they were opening up a pizzeria. She wanted the gifts tags to have the new restaurant's logo on. After preparing the logo to make it suitable for the printing & shrinking it is printed out onto the plastic, then cut to size. I always round the corners when using this plastic as if they are left square then once shrunk they can be quite sharp. I also make sure to make any hole I need before shrinking as it's a pretty tough material to cut afterwards.

Once printed and trimmed the next part of the process is the shrinking, I usually do this in the oven but you can also use a heat gun. Watching the plastic shrink can be a bit nerve-wracking as it curls up and jumps around, as long as the pieces aren't to big them they will eventually even out and flatten themselves again. Below you can see the pieces before and after shrinking, note the difference in thickness and how the shrinking process makes the printed colours more vivid:

The print on one of the larger tags ran a little, the smaller tags were better suited in size for this job anyway (I'd made two sizes to have a choice as you can't always predict how much the plastic will shrink).All that's left is packaging up the cufflinks and stringing the tags on the ribbon ready to send out. The completed packages can be seen below:

The great thing with the shrink plastic is you can also cut it to make simple shapes; for example, in the past I've done heart shaped tags for an anniversary present. Anyone who'd like personalised gift tags with an item simply add details in the comment to seller box when placing your order and if I need any further details I'll get in touch.

Week 5 - Glass engraving

2011-06-22T15:54:00.001+01:00

One of the reason's I wasn't able to update this blog as often as I'd have liked over May was that my martial arts club (Kuk Sool Won Glasgow) was hosting the 2011 Scottish Championships so as well as competing there was quite a lot of work for everyone to do to help organise the event. As well as some general design work I also made some personalised glasses for the Masters' top table.

These had the martial art's logo on one side and the Masters' titles and names on the other side. I use a chemical etching process to do this meaning that the designs can be quite detailed and are more precise than I'd be able to do with hand etching. The design is permanently cut into the surface of the glass and not painted or applied onto it so it is permanent and dishwasher proof.

I'm happy with how they turned out and I think they went down well with the masters themselves!

Week 4 - back on the horse!

2011-06-14T16:48:00.000+01:00

Phew - a busy last few weeks (more about that in a future post!) has got in the way of me updating the blog but catching up now and to make it up I've decided to do some double weeks i.e. at least two posts for the next few weeks till I'm back on track!

This week I decided to get on top of updating my Folksy shop. This meant working my way through all my stock checking what I have and re-listing items that I had previously sold so they were available again. I've still got a few listings to put back up but currently the shop is now up to 76 items! This also means I now have a list of all the stock I need to photograph to then make up new listings for. this list currently sits at 92 items so busy times ahead again, just hope the sun holds out for a wee while to help me get some clear pictures.

I need to do the same with my Etsy store, my aim is to maintain both at over 100 items as this will increase my visability to people searching the sites. And I also want to get started on listing some of my t-shirt designs on both sites within the next few weeks and work on some new products. Some of the items I've updated listings for are shown below:

The last few weeks too have seen a big increase in the number of custom order requests I've had in, a lot of them for weddings. I love working on custom items, I'll show some of the recent ones in a future post too.

Week 3 - Preparing for the Grassmarket Festival

2011-04-24T16:10:00.004+01:00

Week 3 of my Challenge 52, most of this next week will be spent trying to get stock ready for the Grassmarket festival in Edinburgh. I'd decided this year not to do many craft fairs but when I saw that they were looking for people to have stalls at this new festival I thought I'd give it a go as I've not been at an event through in Edinburgh before and I liked the sound of it. It's more of a festival set up with live music and events than a strict craft fair and the stalls space is in outdoor marquees along the Grassmarket area which tends to be busy anyway. I've booked in for Friday the 29th (the day of the Royal wedding) so hopefully the public holiday will bring people out as well, the festival runs from 12 till 8pm so even if people do stay in to watch the wedding I'm hoping they venture out after!

So as well as making stock I've been trying to get together a few promotional items for the fair including making totebags with my logo on (see below). I'm thinking of offering these free to people who spend over a certain amount of money on my t-shirt/clothing items.

For my jewellery and accesories I'm making up wee cotton pouches, again with my logo on. Although I love the black boxes I usually use for online orders I've found these to be a faff when selling in person as it can be awkward tying the ribbons etc when it's busy. The pouches will be much easier i think, plus I'll still bring some boxes for anyone who'd like a more formal gift-wrapping.

I'm also working on some other promotional items which I'm going to use as free gifts for the fair and for an online promotion later on. I need to get some photos of these made up once they're finished; in the meantime if you happen to be around Edinburgh on Friday pop by my stall, if you mention you read this then I'll give you a wee free gift. So on with preparing stock for my stall, keep your fingers crossed for me that it's a sunny day!

Also check out Nanuk Jewellery's Whoopie Pies she made for her challenge 52...they look so delicious!

Week 2 - Mousemats

2011-04-12T11:11:00.003+01:00

Second week of Challenge 52 and this week the focus is a new product. I have made several items for Anne of Anne Reeves Jewellery personalised with her logo in the past, including an apron for her workshops and a phone cover, so when she contacted me about making her a personalised mousemat I agreed to add these to my product range.

I make these items in the same way I do my t-shirts - with contour cut vinyl. Vinyl is an extremely thin sheet of highly coloured material that is heat activated to form a permanent bond with material. The manufacturers say that the bond it forms should outlast the life of the garment/item itself so it is a great alternative to screen printing, especially when one-offs are needed or when special effects like chromes, glitters etc are desired.

The first step in making something is to make sure the design itself can be cut. There are two main type of image files - vector and raster. Raster images are made up of pixels (like most "picture" and photo files) so the shapes and colours are made up of variations in colour of these pixels. As automated cutting machines need a shape or edge to cut these files are no use to them and have to be converted to the second type of file, a vector file, before they're ready for cutting. Vector files contain mathematical information that describes the colours, shapes, lines etc within the image, essentially you can think of them being made up of actual shapes instead of a collection of dots. These my cutting machine understands as it gives it the shapes it's required to cut.

So my first task in making a personalised item for someone is usually vectorising their logo if they can't supply me a vector version (NB if you get your logo made up professionally they should supply you with this version as it's also the best version for print, it will usually be an eps, ai, or vectorised pdf file). Luckily in this case i had aldready done this the first time Anne ordered something from me. You can see her original logo and the vectorised version below.

Original raster image


Vectorised image

Once I have the vector version of the image I can then cut it in the vinyls I've selected to match the colours. In this instance Anne had told me previously she liked the metallic colours I used in her phone cover (I'd made one side with metallic vinyls and the other in a different process with her original logo printed full colour), so I used the same colours in this job - shimmery mettalic purple and shimmery baby pink. Once cut i then "weed" the logo and apply it using my heat press. I'll go further into this process in a future post I have planned where I'll take you through the steps I go through in making a t-shirt.

So the end result is I have a personalised mousemat ready to send out to Anne. I've added some pictures of the finished article below, the camera's not great at picking out the simmer of the colours!

Before Anne asked me about this I hadn't thought about making mousemats as I assumed that most people didn't use them anymore but I've been inspired to add them to my range in my online store. I mocked up some pictures of mousemates with different logos on (including mine!) for the listing. If anyone's interested you can see the listing here.

Another Challenge 52 participant Louise from Nanuk Jewellery has posted up Week 2 as well, you can find her post here.

Week 1 - Menu Design

2011-04-05T16:33:00.003+01:00

First week of Challenge 52 (see this post for an explanation of the challenge) and I thought I'd write about one of my recent graphic design jobs, I just got delivery of the printed up design so perfect timing!

The brief for this job was to design a drinks menu for a bar that could sit out on their tables. The bar already has quite a strong corporate identity (see their website) so I had to make sure the menu would fit with their other promotional material and signage.

The manager's initial idea was to just have a simple folded leaflet style menu as the budget wasn't there for the printing costs for a booklet. However when they told me the budget they did have I thought there might be some room to get a bit creative and hopefully get them something a bit more functional than a basic leaflet. I thought by basing the design around one A3 sheet I could maybe make them a booklet style menu while keeping the costs to a minimum.

The drinks could be split into five categories so with the front page making six I had the idea to make a booklet with coloured, staggered pages so customers could quickly find what they wanted. So much measuring and cutting up of paper later I worked out a design I thought would work quite well to clearly show all the information required. The staggered page design also meant I could make the best use of space i.e. larger categories could be near the back so they had more page space and the smaller ones at the front.

The fact the pages are colour coded and all different sizes means the A3 flat sheet looks a bit confused but when it's trimmed, folded and assembled it all fits together. The front and back of the sheet is shown below:

The good thing is too that the different colours mean it's clear where to fold the pages so assembly is quick. The mock up of the final booklet showing the page layouts is below:

Finally, some pictures of the actual menus, before and after assembly. I'm happy with the way they turned out and they worked out way cheaper than a normal 12 page booklet would have been, in fact they were only marginally more expensive than the original idea for an A4 folded version would have been. They were printed on 200gsm stock and matt laminated so they're pretty sturdy and durable.

If anyone would like to join in with Challenge 52 just comment below and I'll work out a way to create a blog link-up etc. Nanuk jewellery is taking part and you can see her Week 1 post here.

Challenge 52

2011-03-31T13:49:00.000+01:00

Right - in a concerted attempt to try to write more often on this blog (and also to get working through my supplies stash!) I've set myself a challenge-for the next 52 weeks I need to complete a brand new project, photograph it and write about it here. This could be making a new product for my online shops, a personal project (making something for me or producing a promotional item for example), a tutorial showing you how to make something, a new design for t-shirts/hoodies or a new project in my graphic design business. Basically anything that's new!

I'm hoping this is a good way to keep my business moving forward and to spur me to spend time creating promotional material (something i always put to the back-burner) and discovering new product lines; and hopefully make my blog interesting for you to follow.

Big challenge I think will be documenting it all, finding time to write up pieces and, more so, photographing things as this is where the Scottish weather works against me. Here's hoping the spring comes back soon and we get some nice, camera friendly weather.

So wish me luck, and if anyone else wants to join in with the challenge just add your blog link below and we can start out own wee challenge 52 club!

Club Clothing

2011-03-03T12:58:00.004Z

I've been kept busy recently with quite a few orders for custom t-shirts. A few orders have been for birthday parties (and a hen night), a few one-offs and also some club clothing. The latest order I've been working on is for a club I actually go to myself: Sweat & Steel an offshoot of the martial arts school I attend. Classes consist of kettlebell/conditioning excercises and so they were after performance fitness type clothing rather than just bog standard t-shirts. The range we decided on consists of a mix of moisture wicking advanced fabric training tops and t-shirts and hooded tops. You can see some mock-ups of the range below:

I also set up a shop for the club on it's facebook page using the same application I use for my own (payvment) this app allows you to sell direct through your facebook page. The shopping cart payment is powered securly through paypal so facebook itself doesn't get access to anyone's payment details and customers don't even need a paypal account as they can pay using debit/credit cards as a paypal guest. To see the shops click on the "shop now" icon to the left under the profile picture on facebook.

Also payvment have recently launched a new service they see as being a potential contender to the ebay crown, anyone with a facebook shop can now opt for their items to be available in a global Shopping Mall marketplace. It works similar to ebay so items come up in search according to their relevance and again all payment is through paypal. It will be interesting to see if this gets us any more buyers and facebook visitors!

In the meantime if you have any enquiries about getting custom items of clothing/merchandise made up just contact me. I specialise in small to medium orders (of one-offs up) and you're not just limited to t-shirts, in the past I've done bags, aprons, hoodies, hats, laptop covers, phone covers, fashion & sports tops, wallets etc so if you've anything in mind just ask!

Hooded top colours

2011-03-01T19:15:00.000Z

See the picture below for the colours I can offer hooded tops in (click to see a larger version). I can apply your design in a choice of colour(s) too, including plain, metallic and glittery colours.

I take orders for one-offs (without any set-up fees) or for larger quantities, each can be a different colour/design colour too. Perfect for sports teams, company promotion, staff uniforms or even just casual wear.

For more information just get in touch: birdcagecreative@hotmail.co.uk

Personalised scribbling

2011-01-09T14:07:00.004Z

So December was a busy month with a lots of people buying items for Christmas, I ended up spending most of it getting items made for custom orders and to replace sold stock, so much so that I didn't get my own Christmas shopping done till the 23rd! For quite a bit of the month my workspace resembled a crayon factory as my packs of personalised crayons were popular gifts and just about my biggest seller of the month. I'm actually quite glad for the end of the Christmas rush so I can stop dreaming about coloured wax letters!

So we're a little of the way into January and I'm excited about getting new stock photographed and up online, also about a few new lines I'm working on so stay tuned!

Discount offer

2010-11-21T13:22:00.000Z

I recently made it up to 1000 fans/likers on my facebook page and to celebrate I wanted to do an offer of some kind, rather than do a giveaway where only one person wins I thought I'd offer a 15% discount to anyone who's a fan/liker. All I ask you to do is suggest my page to 5 or more of your friends, let me know you've done this (either by commenting here on on my facebook) and I'll message a code for 15% off any of my online shops.

Click here or on the picture for more details!

Custom lampshade

2010-11-09T16:48:00.005Z

I recently got commisioned to make a martial arts themed lampshade for a baby boy's bedroom. The boy's dad is the head martial arts instructor at Kuk Sool Won Glasgow and uses a sillhouette of a kick as part of his promotional material. I'd been asked to make some wall transfers for the room first with the child's name and the kick sillhouette and so I thought it'd be good to try to incorporate the same theme into the lampshade.

I developed the pattern below using the kick, the kicks that appear in white are the ones that would, in the final lampshade, be cut out so the light can shine directly through them to create sillhouettes on the ceiling/walls. the coloured ones were cut from garment vinyl (the same I use to make my t-shirts) and applied to the lampshade surface to form the full pattern.

I initially did the item as a black lampshade with the kicks in red, blue and cut-outs but the black blocked a bit too much of the light when the vinyl was layered on top so I did the final version as a cream lampshade. The finished shade was edged with black bias tape which I sewed on for security and secured to the lampshade frame. you can see the finished article below.

I'm thinking about doing some other designs for lampshades if anyone has any suggestions?

New bar and vinyl transfers

2010-09-29T17:43:00.003+01:00

In my guise as a Graphic Designer I took on the job of doing all the signage, marketing materials and menus etc for a new bar that was to open in the west end of Glasgow in July this year; only problem being the place had to be renovated and ready to open within a three day period, no mean feat! You can see how it looked before the refit below:

How it looked brofre the refit

One of the main aims of the refit was to make the place look more like a bar, the building had originally been a bank and the frosted panels lining the stairway and mezzanine level suited it's previous incarnations as various restaurants but for a bar we thought it had to have a more intimate and informal look. So the plan was born to cover these panels with black vinyl with a repeating pattern of vines to complement the new wallpaper.

With the other signage being installed over the three days it fell to me (and my trusty vinyl cutting plotter) to do the panels. the vinyl was prepared almost like wallpaper, with long strips that I'd pass through my cutter which would cut the pattern out ready for me to weed out the unwanted parts, I'd then transfer the strips to the panels making sure they were aligned so the pattern was continuous; so 15 metres of vinyl and three 18 hour shifts later the place was ready! Huge job but i think it makes all the difference to the feel of the place and I especially like the fact that as the pattern is cut out and not stencilled or printed on the frosted glass shows through the vines so when the sun's out it shines through these parts while being blocked by the black vinyl parts. below are some photos of the new bar and some of the external signage and beer menu. NB All photography in this post is from John Linton at Lintonpix (apart from one obvious amateur attempt from me!)

For anyone within visiting distance the bar is called The Long Way Home and specialises in the world's most misunderstood spirit - Gin, with over 25 different varieties of gin and geniver available and a great gin based cocktail list. It also has a "strange and unsettling" beer selection (the manager's words not mine!) with a lot of lesser known beers including some from the Flying Dog Brewary in Maryland, various Belgian varieties and also is the only bar in Britain with Delirium Tremens on draft (known by many by the pink elephant on the label, which might have something to do with the pink elephant that can sometimes be seen in and around the west end!) Another speciality of the bar is the regular tastings nights - two course meal followed by a gin, rum or beer tasting, see their facebook page for more details. Ok, plug over!

If you do go...beware the pink elephant!

Map of sales so far

2010-08-30T13:56:00.001+01:00

I thought it would be interesting to try and chart where my jewellery and t-shirts were ending up so I've created a world map showing my sales from February this year to date. Some people have been repeat buyers so I've only included one marker for them also I've only done one marker per place (I've had a few sales to different people in the same towns. You can see the resultant map below, or for more detail click here to see it on the Wayfairing site.

I'm hoping to try keep the map up to date as I make more sales, here's hoping it fills up quickly! I think you can follow/track other peoples maps too so let me know if you make one of your own and I'll follow you!

Custom pendants and giveaway winners

2010-08-26T15:03:00.002+01:00

A while back I ran a giveaway that offered two winners the chance to get their picture of choice made into a customised necklace. The winners were picked randomly from everyone who commented on the giveaway post, I thought I'd show you quick how the necklaces turned out.

The first winner chose a picture that would remind her of her husband when he was away on duty, a picture of his plane flying through the sky.

The second chose a holiday photo and asked for it to be matched with a gold/beige satin necklace.

Both necklaces are made with 1 inch sqaure crystal clear glass tiles, the image is sealed before being bonded to the tile. A silverplated bail is attached to the back which is then coated with a thick layer of resin to both waterproof it and give a glossy finish. The pendant is then finished with a choice of chain/satin necklace.

I hope both winners were happy with the finished product! If you like these you can find customised necklaces listed in my shops (in £ here and in $ here). Any picture can be used (as long as you have copyright), for example a kids drawing, photograph, illustration, logo etc. You can see another pendant I was commisioned to make below, along with one I have made with decorative fabric.

Folksy Friday - Martial Arts

2010-07-09T14:56:00.001+01:00

Straight after listing my martial arts magnet set on Folksy I saw a great ninja note book (fiona t's below) that had just been listed too so I was inspired to make Martial Arts my theme for this week's Folksy Friday. Fiona does a number of different notebook designs, and they're on my wish list now!

I've had to cheat a little bit and include my own item as there's not that many martial arts/ninja inspired items on Folksy yet, apart from Liley's store which is ninja'd out to the max! She makes loads of combinations of mini ninjas with assorted weapons and also does bead and earring variations.

So to my picks...

From left to right the people featured above are Liley's, Gifts Shack & Design, Fiona T, my own shop Birdcage Creative and Miss Cherrys Boutique. Click on the pictures themselves or the names to visit the shops.

While I'm on the subject of martial arts, a fellow Folksy seller and martial arts enthusiast CatMcCracken got in touch with me a few weeks ago asking if I could answer a few questions about the martial art I do (kuk Sool Won) and crafting for her blog, so check back soon as once I've sent back my answers to her I'll put a link up here to the feature.

My first fair...

2010-07-06T18:27:00.002+01:00

A couple of weekends ago I took part in my first fair, it was a school fete rather than an actual craft fair but I saw it as a good chance to work out how to display my items and test out how it would all work for bigger fairs.

I didn't want to spend too much money on fancy displays and I also don't really like the industrial look of the usual jewellery displays so tried to do as much as I could with things I already had around the house with the addition of a few things.

My table featuring my bored looking assistant salesman for the day!

For my table covering I managed to get two sets of great heavy cream curtains that were perfect as being in four seperate pieces are really flexible for different table sizes and layouts. I applied my business name on one of them thinking it would hang down over the side of the table. As it turns out the tables were a lot lower than I thought they'd be (they were maybe mid thigh level) so I arranged it so the name sat on the top of the table instead so it could be seen as the sides would be well below eye level.

For the actual displays I had to change tact at the last minute. I'd got a hinged cork board I'd been intending on using for my earrings and a couple of other peices I was planning to put my necklaces and zipper pouches on; but I had painted them with blackboard paint hoping to be able to chalk on information/prices but for some reason the paint just wouldn't dry! So on the morning of the fair I had to go to Plan B - a small wooden unit and a chalkboard I usually have in my hall stood in. I actually really like the way the chalk board worked with my earrings and would probably use it again next time.

You can see my chalkboard earring display and my mugtree keyring displays

Stock-wise I had quite a selection, my necklaces, earrings, bracelets, cufflinks, rings and brooches that are avaiable in my online shops; and also some t-shirt designs I've been working on, some lined zipper pouches in imported japanese fabric and furry cow fabric and some magnets sets. I'm planning to list a lot of these ranges in my online shops too as soon as I get some good photos taken. I'd also made up loads of keyrings and some phone charms as pocket money items seeing as it was a school fair.

On the left are my earrings, cufflinks, zip pouches and magnets. On the right, some t-shirts and my info/cards

I'd went expecting not to sell too much seeing as it was the first time I'd attempted a stall and also because it was a school fete. I was upstairs in the hall while a lot of the games and other stalls were outside, after lunchtime (we were near the canteen!) the footfall really dropped off but I'm still happy with how I did. I sold pretty much one of everything, and got an order in for two t-shirt designs. All in all I made more than I expected, especially seeing as I think I was the only stall there selling handmade items and also a lot of people took my business card so it was a great first event.

Fathers day's fast approaching!

2010-06-08T21:44:00.002+01:00

It's Father's Day on the 20th of June, so it's time to start getting organised! I thought I'd showcase some of my own items that would make good gifts for the occasion, mainly my cufflinks and keyrings. These are all available in my facebook store and most in my Folksy and Etsy stores. The photos link to my facebook and Folksy stores (all in £) to see prices and to buy in $ visit my Etsy shop.

Folksy Friday finds...

2010-06-08T21:43:00.002+01:00

Letterpress printing is one of those things that one day I'd love the chance to do. Traditionally it's where a negative is made of the image you want to print (like a block or movable type-the loose metal letters you used to find in newspaper printers), the negative is inked and then pressed into the paper to produce a print. Because of the pressing motion letterpress printing is usually indented to various degrees, which you can see in some of the examples below. This is probably what I like so much about it, it has a tactile quality, and also due to the inking and press process no two can be produced exactly the same - mass production but not.

Letterpress printing can be used for everything that more modern printing is used for and is commonly used for high quality wedding invites. Now more modern processes have been devised it isn't as common as it once was as it's more labour intensive and more reliant on non-automated processes. There are some lovely printshops out there doing amazing work - but more about them in a future post! Right now here's some letterpress finds from the UK handmade marketplace Folksy to kick off my "Folksy Fridays".

From left to right the people featured above are AarkvarkOnSea, Biplane Press & Design, Lapwing Printworks, The Home Press and Print for The Love of Wood. Click on the pictures to visit the items or on the names to visit the shops.

Recent swap...

2010-06-03T14:38:00.008+01:00

I'm new to the world of swaps, I didn't even realise they existsed till I started getting involved in craft/handmade forums! But they can be quite a big thing and a chance to sample work from other crafty people. I heard that SpoiltPig was organising a cat themed swap and thought I'd give it a bash!

My swap partner was Izabela from Blue Fish Handmade and you can see the lovely things she sent me below. There was a little handmade crochet (or is this style called Amigurumi?) lilac cat, which has been promptly claimed by my own cat as his new favourite playmate, some stickers, some cute wee buttons and a wooden cat decoration too.

I've also added pictures of a couple of the things I sent Izabela, a pink necklace with a black cat shillouette and a set of four fridge magnets with different cat designs on them. I'd also sent her some shrink plastic to try out and some fluffy tiger stickers. I enjoyed swap, hope Izabela did too!

First attempt at something new...

2010-05-27T13:51:00.004+01:00

I'd been thinking about buying a sewing machine for a while and had been looking into which type would be best to get when I saw one that seemed to have everything I wanted in a machine on sale. So about 6 weeks ago I became the proud owner of my very first sewing machine!

I'm pretty impatient so after having a quick play about with it to learn the basics I launched straight into trying to make a bag, I always lug about a lot of stuff in my bags so I like them to have lots of pockets and to be roomy enough for my assorted notebooks and diaries, pens and occasionally my boxing gloves for my martial arts classes! I found a pattern for a bowling style bag that I liked the look of and decided to give it a go; when I say found a pattern....I found measurements for the bag and rough instructions on how to make it and made up my own pattern (probably not the best things to do for a first attempt). I've made a few mistakes so far, one being that I meant for the side panels (beneath the start and end of the zip) to be cord like the front and back, but only realised I hadn't when I'd sewed it all together! Anyway, I'm very happy with how it's coming along so far, it's still a work in progress as I need to add the base, lining (which I'm doing in hot pink to match the humming bird) and work out how to incorporate some pockets on the inside and outside.

Since starting this I've also done some smaller items that I'm hoping to make more of in time for a fair mid June and if they go down well I might also sell through my online shops. I'm really looking forward to actually finishing my bag off first though and who knows, if I get good at these I might try selling them too!

Another custom order

2010-05-12T21:50:00.002+01:00

I got an email the other week asking me to make a necklace similar to my greyhound one but instead using a sillhouette of India (for the customer's friend who is living out there). You can see the final necklace below. I also included a heart shaped keyring in the same design as a wee free gift.

This uses the last of my green and gold necklaces (the other is on the greyhound necklace) and I've searched high and low to source these, even getting someone to go to the shop I bought them in (in Toronto) to ask but they claimed to never having seen them! I like the colour combo in them and they're also soft compared to the usual ones you find. Hopefully I'll come across a supplier at some point again...

Packaging experiments

2010-05-11T00:51:00.000+01:00

Like I said in a previous post I've been playing around with various types of packaging for my items in an attempt to work out which I want to use. I've mainly been using craft card finish boxes with a small sticker in the form of the bird in my current logo, tied with either twine or ribbon. But I've also sent out a few items with little canvas bags with my logo applied to them (see the photos), in these ones the items are first wrapped in tissue paper. You can see some variations on these in the photos below:

I'm determined to make time to do a proper set of branding materials this month (in time for my first fair in June!) and included in that will be my proper logo and a final decision on what packaging to use. I think I may end up using both bags and boxes as they both have their place. I've also got plans for packaging for my t-shirts/hoodies that I'll hopefully be able to roll out soon.

Currently I'm using up my hangtags I made for my t-shirts and altering them slighty so they work as business cards (which I send out with all orders). I plan to have new hangtags and business cards once I've decided on the design so in the meantime these are the one's I'm using (along with some wee badges I had done too):

A recent custom order

2010-05-09T16:18:00.005+01:00

I recently got contacted by someone who wanted me to make a custom piece of jewellery as a gift for his wife for her birthday, his plan was to have a necklace that incorporated her birthstone and also birthflower (her birthday was in April so these were diamond and daisies). He'd seen my daffodil necklace and wanted the daisy included in a similar way.

In this case as it was to be a special item I made it using sterling silver chain and findings and decided the nicest way to incorporate the diamond was to use two small heart shaped swarovski crystals. To include real flowers in resin you have to ensure they're totally dehydrated as any moisture left will affect the resin and also could mean the flower can decay inside. This is usually done by burying the flowers in silica crystals abut a side effect is that the colours are also muted. So I decided instead to make the daisy, roughly full scale, out of polymer clay to keep it as realistic looking as possible.

You can see the pictures of the finished piece below, I'm happy to say the customer was really pleased with the piece and hopefully his wife was too!

My workspace

2010-04-12T12:29:00.007+01:00

I'm pretty lucky in that I've got a spare bedroom in my flat which I could turn into my workshop, but as the property's rented I'm limited in what I can do with it so it tend to look a bit haphazard!

Another problem is that I live in an old style attic flat so the eaves of the roof mean I only have enough height for proper shelves, or to stand up properly, in the very middle of the room opposite my window. So to work around that I’ve got my t-shirt/hoodie production side of things all on low-level work surfaces, so I have to sit on the floor to work my heat press etc.

I’m on the lookout for more storage that fits the room and my needs – ideally something with loads of drawers so I can store away all my jewellery findings, beads, tools etc. And maybe has racks I can put all my sign and garment vinyl in…I think to get that I’d probably have to make it myself! So here’s what it looks like right now (excuse the mess please!):

I love my desk-my Dad made me it years ago and it's extra deep and has shelves and a drawer. It's currently stacked with jewellery findings, tools, markers & pens, tape etc. Stuff pinned up on the wall and board is info for projects I'm working on right now. You can just about see my shelves (in the tallest part of the room!) with a random assortment of books, fabric and works in progress.

My garment production area with heat press and some vinyls stacked behind. Underneath here is where the real mess is, packing materials (bubble wrap, mailing envelopes, boxes, bags, ribbon etc).

Another view of my desk with my wee craft robo cutting some vinyl ready for a t-shirt.

Three Folksy finds!

2010-03-30T12:47:00.008+01:00

Since setting up my shop on the uk based handmade marketplace Folksy last month I've discovered a whole collection of talented crafty peole and developed quite a long wishlist of things I'd like to buy! So far I've restricted myself to three things that I saw and fell in love with...

My first purchase was this wee soap set from Bits N Bobs, they're so realistic! I had to justify this to myself as something I could buy and give as a gift to someone so I'm waiting for some birthdays to come round (hopefully not of anyone who reads my blog!). This seller also makes a really cute haribo style soap set and sent me a wee sample soap with my order which smells amazing!

The second thing I bought was this lovely necklace from Crafty Little Mia who makes a variety of things including button based jewellery, illustrations, fine silver jewellery as well as her own fabric designs. The necklace I bought has a wee button pendant on it made from fine silver clay which is a material you can mould and once fired, finished and polished has a higher silver content than sterling (around 99%). I love this necklace and it's going to get lots of wear!

Lastly, just today I bought this postcard set, it's from an illustrator called Elli Moody who I discovered though the Folksy forum. There was a thread on the forum with people recommending shops that they loved, I clicked and found this one and the chicken postcards just jumped out at me. I love the style of illustration used throughout the items in this shop and almost wish I was moving house so I could use her new address cards!

I think this is the one downside of setting my shop up - just finding so many things I want to buy and having to rein myself in constantly!

what to do....

2010-03-25T12:50:00.000Z

I bought these beads a while ago and because I bought them online they turned out to be a lot bigger than I imagined in my head! I had bought them with the intention of making a bracelet but I'm thinking now that they're maybe a bit too chunky for this?

They're amathyst but have veins of varying colours through them too so vary from deep dark purple to light lilacs, whites and brown tones.

I'm hoping someone has a bright idea to give me some inspiration! Leave me a comment with your suggestions...

Personalised pendants

2010-03-22T00:31:00.002Z

I've been meaning to list these for a while now (since I had my giveaway) as there seemed to be a good response them. The basic idea is you can have a picture that means something to you made into a keepsake pendant. It is something that is quite popular in North America but I haven't seem much over in the UK, in fact I had to buy my supplies from the States so I hope they prove popular!

The pendants are approx an inch square and I finish the backs with fabric and a thick resin coat to proect the picture itself, make the bail secure and to give a water resistant glass-like finish to the back to match the glass tile front.

I'll need to see how the choice of necklace types goes down, it's hard when listing items to know how much information to include and whether to just do a standard item or give people choices. With this item because it is customised I'm hoping people appreciate the option of chain/necklace types and colours, so it is more personal to them. But it means that it requires a bit more interaction between me and the customer after their purchase so I'm sure I'll have to iron out how this works best.

Leave me a comment to let me know what you think and what you could see peole doing with these. Of my giveaway winners, one was on holiday so is looking out their photo for me now, the other I'm in the process of making her necklace, I'll post up a photo when it's done!
Anyway you can find my personalised necklaces in my shop (click here)

Packaging and promotion

2010-03-13T21:21:00.006Z

This week I got some nice promotional goodies sent to me from Lady Umbrella, a new T-shirt brand that takes their promotion work very seriously. They sent me some stickers and also a pin badge (see below)

I first found these guys on a t-shirt makers forum over a year ago and so saw the thorough approach they took to setting up their company and working towards a launch date. They fully launched their line this February and have already been featured in National media and one of their t-shirts will be in a new feature length movie Booked Out. Their approach to promotion is very inspiring. Now that I've started selling more items I really want to get definate packaging and promotional materials designed and made...watch this space!

Winners, busts and new stock

2010-03-11T21:34:00.010Z

My personalised pendant giveaway ended on saturday there so using a random number generator (http://www.random.org/) I drew the two winners and emailed them to let them know. The first winner got back to me right away and is looking out her picture for the pendant but I haven't heard back from winner number 2 yet so I think I'll give it till the end of next week then draw another winner if I still haven't heard. So if you're reading this winner number two email me back!

I'm indending too to make personalised pendants (i.e. with your own photo) available for sale. Because of the process they would have a turnaround of a week to 10 days. Is this something people would be interested in? Please leave me a comment with any thought you have.

I'm trying to develop my product photos as seeing as customers to my online shop can't physically pick up and inspect my pieces having good photos is very important. I've yet to work out how to get any good ones at all of my t-shirts or hoodies but I'm working on it! The jewellery is slightly easier because it's smaller but I've proved to myself I can't get good photos of it being worn (seeing as I'm not a contorsionist or professional photographer!) so I think my next project will be to try to make a display bust for necklaces at least. Rena Klingenberg gives a tutorial on her blog showing how to make a simple one like the picture above that I might try out (picture from Dana's Jewellery Design)

I've been listing some new items in my online shop and there's more to come, I managed to get some time to spend making new stuff and so have a batch of resin pieces that need finished. Before I get to much more up for sale I really want to concentrate on developing my logo and packagin material. Right now I'm trying out some different ways of packaging including gift boxes, mini customised cotton drawstring bags and pillow packs. I need to decided and settle for my packaging 'look'. Some items that I'll be listing in the next few weeks...

Personalised pendant giveaway!

2010-02-28T23:41:00.005Z

My facebook fan page reached a milestone of 200 fans this weekend so to mark the occasion (if it can be called that!) I'm running a wee giveaway for two of my personalised photo pendants.

The winners just send me a digital copy of the picture they'd like on the pendant (it could be a photo, a drawing done by your child, anything that you like really) and I will produce a customised glass tile pendant with their choice of chain, ribbon, velvet or coloured silk necklace. You can see an example of the pendants below, these ones were made with fabric but the same process is used for pictures, they are about an inch square and made from crystal clear rounded glass tiles.

How to enter - to enter all you have to do is visit my shop (here), and then add your comment below telling me which item in the shop is your favourite.

There's a few ways you can comment here, beneath the comment box there's a drop down box entitled "comment as". If you have a google mail account you can select that, else you can select 'name & url' or 'anonymous'.

IMPORTANT - However you comment do it be sure to leave me your email address, or other form of contact so I can get in touch if you win!

Deadline - Comment before 12 noon on Sat 6th of March to enter, then I will select two winners using a random number generator site. Remember to leave me your details so I can get in touch if you win, and good luck!

I'm also planning to have some offers and discounts soon that are available exclusively to my facebook fans so visit my page here if you want to get involved.

Feature-tastic Week!

2010-02-25T11:47:00.005Z

This week has been exciting so far - I noticed on Tuesday that I'd been featured in an Etsy treasury. Treasuries are small galleries that sellers make up to showcase items they like, usually with a theme. This treasury was made up by Missie Krissie who sells some beautiful delicate silver jewellery and the theme was 'Filigree' which is a metalworking style that produces items that almost resemble lace. My red suede heart bracelet was one of the items she featured in her picks (see below)!

Then, this morning I found out I my green and gold greyhound necklace has also been featured on Cutable, a site (curated by Swirlyarts) that features cute items and accesories found for sale online.

Also my little glass mice phone/bag charms are on the Craft Blog UK (an online resource for UK craft businesses) as part of a post about how to promote your business.

And finally, to prove things come in fours not threes, today I also found out that I am a featured designer on Charlette Hupfield Ceramics' website! Charlette is a talented ceramic artist who recently took part in the Handmade Olympics she has included my citrus cufflinks in her featured artist gallery (see below). Thanks again to all the people who featured my work this week, you rock!

First week on folksy and fabric

2010-02-17T23:00:00.006Z

So my shop's been open a week and in that time I've made one online sale and six offline sales from people who'd seen the items on it, two of which were custom items (and one 'almost' sale to the US but the buyer disapeared and didn't complete payment!). So I'm happy with the start I've had! I'm still working hard to catch up with listing items, taking photos, updating facebook and twitter, trying out other online venues to sell and eventually I'll maybe get the time to make some more items. My first online sale was to a fellow folksy shop owner pussy galore who makes beautiful sock cats, check her out!

In the meantime I've discovered Spoonflower, a service that lets you get designs made into fabric, it's US based but looks great, hopefully in the future I'll be able to use it for a project. The way it works you upload your designs and then they'll print them for you but you can also sell your new fabrics to the public through the site, there is some really nice stuff on there, a wee showcase of some of my favourites is below:

This includes fabrics available from: craftylittlemia , renule , maile , petunias , bronhoffer , royal forest , cabinpressstudio , troismiettes and hlozik

Online shop is open!

2010-02-10T00:29:00.002Z

I've only uploaded some items and will update it over the next few days but my Folksy shop is open. I've started out with some jewellery and accesories and will expand as I get stuff photographed and made.

Check it out and leave me a comment to let me know what you think! Online shop

Alphabetti Spagetti

2010-02-01T01:14:00.009Z

I dont know if it's a side effect of my graphic design work but I really love typography based design.

These typography drawers are my absolute favourite, they're from Kent & London and are handmade. A little out of my budget though!

Typographic soap from Soapy Love, scented with crushed peppermint the soap was molded from a unique silicone mold.

A - Z shelves, used to be made by Pottery Barn but have been delisted...they're crying out to be home-made though, hmm - if I ever have time!

Resin and painting pendant

2010-01-28T09:00:00.003Z

I had the idea to make a necklace for a Christmas present for a friend of mine. She is an illustrator and paints horse and dog portraits (you can see her work on her website here) so I thought it would be nice to embed one of her works in a pendant. After finding an image I thought would go well I had to print and seal it before embedding it inside a pewter pendant bezel and once it had fully cured I hung it on a purpley-aubergine ribbon necklace.

The first picture shows the whole necklace (with a small pink star on the extension chain) And the second is a close up of the pendant itself. I hope she liked it!

Progress and award

2010-01-27T21:37:00.005Z

It's been a really busy week so I've not been able to update my facebook page yet this week and I'm late posting this (well late by my self-imposed aim to blog at least once weekly!)

But I'm happy as even without it my facebook page fanbase is steadily creeping up, I'm at 89 fans now and I'd planned to do announce a giveaway when I was close to 100 so keep your eyes peeled!

I had another good surprise, last week Minky Magic (maker of lovely vintage inspired accessories) awarded me with my first blog award, the Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity & creativity inspires others in the blog world. I was delighted to recieve this so early into my blogging experience.

The rules for accepting this award are:
Put the logo on your blog or within your post,
Pass the award onto 12 bloggers,
Link the nominees within your post,
Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog,
Link to the person from whom you received this award.

So after catching up with the blogs I follow I have decided to pass the award on to:
Created and Felted,Niche Handmade,Mini Felts,Not Just Handbags, Giddy Stuff, Team Awesome, Monkey & Squirrel, Itty Bitty Ninja Kitty, Haptree and Me, Experimentalk, Carl Martin Jewellery, Aviya Glass
Enjoy!

Stuck with photography so here's some t-shirts!

2010-01-18T22:10:00.010Z

Trying to sort out the photos to be able to list items for sale online is giving me a headache so I thought I'd distract myself (and post something contructive!) by putting up some of my commisioned t-shirt designs. These ones were done for a local martial arts school, a couple of one offs and the main club t-shirt. All were done with heat applied vinyl.

Unlike screen printing, which has high set-up costs, using vinyl means it's possible to do one-off designs and small runs which would just work out too expensive otherwise. Also you can get nice effects like metallics, glow in the darks, glitter, patterned, sparkles etc. The standard club t-shirt (left) is metallic gold on black.

One drawback to using vinyl is it's harder to do multicoloured designs as you can't do shades only blocks of colour. If you look at the Matador t-shirt (the first picture) you can see it's made up of three shades of red and a tan colour. (NB. This image actually shows a black as well but as the final design was applied on a black t-shirt the t-shirt itself was used for the background colour. This image is a mock-up).

6 inspiring paper artists

2010-01-10T14:42:00.019Z

How people interact with physical designs is a big area of interest to me, when studying product design it was relatively easy to see how to consider this with actual physical products, but in my graphic design work it's a harder matter as you are mainly dealing with simple 2D materials (posters, flyers etc). Because of this I became interested in pop-ups, and through researching these realised that the world of making 3d forms from paper was a lot wider and exciting than i first thought.

Pop-ups, origami, kirigami, paper architecture, paper illustration, Mon-kiri, scherenschnitte, paper art...there is no one term that can cover the variety of facets in this field. Below I've compiled a very short list of some of the most inspiring artists/craftmens in this field. Hope you like it!

Eric Joisel
Amazing paper sculptures that almost look like they've been carved from stone. The root of Joinsel's work lies in origami, and the "Creating Process" section on his website shows how complex the folding pattern are. Amazingly most of his figures are created from single sheets of paper.

Jen Stark
Instead of folding, Jen Stark's paper art uses a technique of cutting through stacks of coloured paper to produce sculptures reminiscent of wormholes and fractal patterns.

Peter Callesen
A combination of paper folding and cutting (origami and kirigami) give Peter Callesen's works a feeing of delicate fragility. He uses the basic white A4 sheet to produce the majority of his creations.

Rob Ryan
Rob Ryan's impossibly intricate paper cuts contrast romantic images with the darker sentiment of the words carved within them.

Ingrid Siliakus
Taking inspiration from the founder of this particular type of paper art Masahiro Chatani, Ingrid Siliakus uses the complex art of cutting and folding to create precise architectural forms. Unlike origami where several sheets of paper can be used in paper architecture the intricate models are made from just one sheet of paper so cuts have to be carefully calculated.

Yulia Brodskaya
A graphic designer, Yulia has developed a unique style using cut and curled paper to make colourful, flowing typographic illustrations.

Setting up to sell online to do lists!

2010-01-02T23:41:00.008Z

Trying to get ready to get items listed up online for sale but there so much to do and it can be a bit like the chicken and the egg....what to do first, what's better done when there's actually listings up.

I'm concentrating on setting up on Etsy first, even though it's a US based site (and so all transactions are in dollars) it seems to be the busiest handmade marketplace and where most people seem to get most success. So my logic is - is everything's set up on there then it should be easy to transfer to other marketplace sites. So currenty my to do list includes:

- research and write shop policies (shipping, returns etc)
- write descriptions for around 5 items to start me off
- photoshop the rest of the item photos ready for listing
- design and make packaging and basic business cards to send out with orders
- make a spreadsheet that lets me work out selling prices and also allows me to track etsy, paypal and postage fees
- sort out a paypal account

and that's before I start on getting t-shirt designs and other items made. My main problem at the minute is getting bogged down in researching things (like shipping policies etc), I need to stop reading and start writing! Plus I'm still trying to get some belated Christmas presents for friends made up too.

Here's a pair of transformers cufflinks I made for a friends birthday, I'm quite happy with the way they turned out, and some of my lastest batch of resin bits and bobs waiting to get polished up...

so adventures in blogging begin...

2009-12-30T21:35:00.006Z

I design and make custom t-shirts, hoodies, jewellery and crafty things and am hoping to soon have some of my stuff up for sale on a couple of handmade marketplaces including Etsy and Folksy. I was hoping to have this done for the New Year but so much to do and so little time!

I thought I'd start off with listing some jewellery and add in my t-shirt designs and other assorted things as I get them finished. From other websites and shop listings I've seen I personally think photography makes or breaks a shop so I was hoping to get some half decent shots done of a couple of items to start me off...not realising it's really not as simple as it sounds!

Spent most of my day messing about with a rough-and-ready lightbox set up (based on this tutorial) but I really don't have the lighting required (or maybe just the skill!) so ended up spending most of the time adjusting my images in photoshop.

I think I'm going to buy a couple of desk lights and experiment with some backgrounds. And maybe with a bit of practice I get clear shots without having to spend time editing out the shadows of my hand, camera, head etc etc!

Anyway....some initial shots.

Creative facebook profile pictures

2009-11-11T15:16:00.003Z

You might have noticed that facebook overlaps your profile picture slightly with the light blue banner on your profile page, you can use this to get a bit creative with your picture like those below:

photo from allfacebook.com

To do this you're essentially just playing around with the space that facebook allocates for your profile picture. You need to have some basic knowledge of image editing and access to appropriate software (something along the lines of photoshop, illustrator, corel draw etc). This should work for both personal profiles and pages/groups.

Facebook allows your profile picture to maximum of 200 x 600 pixels, any picture larger than this will be scaled to 200 pixels in width. Firstly this means you can have a picture that's longer than the classic square photo as anything up to 200 pixels wide by 600 long will be displayed without any scaling.

The second thing you can use to your advantage is the fact that facebook usually places your picture 52 pixels above the gray dividing line in the light blue area of the page (shown below with my old, unmodified picture)

my old page profile picture

You can see this placement actually looks a bit awkward, but with a few tweaks you can make a much nicer effect like those at the top, I'll outline the steps you need to do this.

Firstly you have to set up a blan document in your image editing program at 200x600 pixels (or whatever length you want your picture to be) and create a "blank" facebook background, like that shown at the bottom of this post, using the same colours as on the standard profile page.

The gray line appears 52 pixels from the top of the picture, the gray facebook uses is #D8DFEZ in hex (or in rgb it's 216/223/234) and the line has a stroke of approximately 1 pixel. Above that the light blue box is #EDEFF4 (237/239/244 in rgb). For anyone struggling with this I've included a link to a jpeg I made with a ready-made blank background, just add your own picture to it. To download the jpeg just click on the blank background image at the bottom of this post.

Once you have this set up you can paste your image on top, the key here for the effects shown at the top is to have an over lapbetween your image and the base background. To achive this you can mask out part of your picture (like in the peeking out picture below) or simply use a vector image with a transparent background (like I have in my new profile picture). There are several different ways to mask out a background in an image, you can find a quick tutorial on how to do it using the quick mask tool in photoshop here.

photo from walyou.com

Now all you have to do is upload your new picture on to your profile (if you hover to the top right of your existing picture on facebook a link to 2change picture" should appear, select "upload" and away you go).

One thing to check after you've uploaded your new picture is that the thumbnail appears as you want it. Again if you hover to the top right of your picture you can select "change picture" then "edit thumbnail". drag the thumbnail box around till you're happy with the picture and save.

I wanted my picture to closer reflect my business card and branding in my online shops so you can see my new one below:

my new profile picture

I said above that the grey line normally appears 52 pixels below the top of the picture, the only thing now that will messes with this placement is if you put up a status update that is longer than one line. This will nudge your picture down as the light blue bar expands to accomodate your update. the way around this is to update your status as normal and then click on the "clear" link which appears next to your profile/page name on the blue bar. This just clears the status from here but it will still appear on your wall and in your friends/fans news feeds.

Hope this helps you alter your profile picture - any questions and example of pictures you create using this tutorial are welcome!

Click here or on the picture below to download the "blank" profile picture background

"blank" profile picture background

Hiding the sidebar on the static pages

2009-02-23T23:35:00.000Z

Following on from step four - Make a ‘contact me’ static page

I realised when I was testing my pages I’d prefer the static pages to have the look of a normal webpage without the sidebar widgets. There are two ways to do this that I found. First to edit your template to decide not to display the sidebar on all static pages and secondly to tell each static page not to display the sidebar. I tried the first way and it didn’t work for me at all. I’m not sure if different templates work differently because I’m no html expert but I found adding the code to each page was the only way I could suppress the sidebar. So again go to your dashboard and edit your page. The pages you’ve created will come up, you need to do this for every page. Select a page to edit and in the content box, before your text or form html or whatever you’ve included in there paste this code:

<style type="text/css">
#sidebar-wrapper {display: none;}
#main-wrapper {width: 650px;}
</style>

The width variable will be specific to your template and look you want, experiment with this till you’re happy. Now do this for each page copying and pasting your code before the rest of the content. View and check it’s worked and your width settings.
If you have any problems with this and want to try the other way (editing the template) then go here. This is the tutorial I used, it’s in French so I used google translate to get the jist of it!

Hopefully now you have navigation links and have an understanding how to create the static pages that you want. Leave me a comment to let me know how you get on!

Make a ‘Contact Me’ page

2009-02-23T23:30:00.003Z

Following on from step three - Making ‘about me’ static page

Before you start making your contact me page you need to create an html form. I found the easiest way to do this was to use a free online form generator. I used emailmeform but there are plenty to be found if you search online. All this site requires is a free registration then it takes you through the steps of making your own form, you can choose what you want the fields to be and how it’s delivered to you etc. Now you’ll get to a point where it asks you for your ‘Thank You’ page url. At this point I went back to my blog and created this page in exactly the same way as the about me instructions describe, but this time called it Thank You and didn’t add it to the linkbar. You can see mine here.

Once you’ve created your page remember to view it and copy the url just like before. This time paste it into the relevant box in the form generator site. This page is essentially hidden on your blog, no-one sees it till they’ve filled out the email form. If you want to see how I’ve done mine feel free to send me an email through the contact me form!

Ok so complete all the steps on the form generator site and you’ll get to the point where it gives you the html code for your form. Copy this, go back to your blog and, just like you did for your about me page, create a new page pasting this code into the page content box. Give your page an appropriate title and add to your link bar the same way as before. You can test it by sending yourself a practice email.

You can add other static pages in this way, blogger limits you to 10 pages in all though.

Go to step five - Hiding the sidebar on the static pages

Make an ‘About me’ page

2009-02-23T23:26:00.002Z

Following on from previous step - Linking to home and my shop

To make your first static page go back to your dashboard and click on ‘new post’. Now if you’ve selected Blogger in Draft as your default dashboard you’ll now see ‘edit pages’ beside the usual ‘edit post’. Click on edit pages and select New Page. You can now give your page a title (I called mine about me) which will appear as a heading on the page, and type out anything you want to appear on the page. Once you’re happy with it click on ‘Publish’ and blogger will now ask you to select how you want your page to appear. This is where you want to select ‘no gadget’ so that blogger doesn’t add it’s own linkbar in, you’ve already set up all you need in the previous steps. Click ‘Save and Publish’ and when the confirmation page appears click on ‘View Page’. Blogger will now take you to your new page and what you want to do is copy and paste the url that appears in your browser.

Now go back to your dashboard, back to layout and click on your linkbar widget again. Add this new static page just like you did your home and shop pages, pasting the url into the new site url box. You can view your blog and check that your new link works and lets you switch between your About Me and Home pages.

Go to step four - Make a ‘contact me’ static page

Link to homepage and shop

2009-02-23T23:22:00.002Z

Following on from the Previous step - Set up a navigation bar

Ok so you’ve clicked edit on your linkbar widget – a window should pop up now allowing you to add the first of your links. The first one I added was ‘home’. Simply type home in the ‘new site name’ box and paste your blog url into the ‘new site url’ box. Click on ‘Add Link’ and you’ll see Home appear at the bottom of this pop up window. Now enter ‘shop’ in the new site name box (or whatever you want to call your online shop link) and this time type or paste your online shop url into the new site url box. Again, add link, and it will appear above home at the bottom of the window. You can reorder the link using the wee up and down arrows beside them - the item at the top of the list will appear furthest left. Now you can click on save and go to ‘view blog’ and see if your new links appear on your blog! Remember we haven’t yet added any static pages so clicking ‘Home’ will just reload your blog. Clicking on your shop link should, hoever, open up your online shop if you’ve linked correctly. Now to add some pages.

Go to step three - Make an ‘About me’ page

Set up a navigation bar

2009-02-23T23:13:00.002Z

The navigation bar I made entirely from a tutorial by Haptree. You can use blogger’s new static pages widget to create a link bar but apparently it is bug ridden and also doesn’t let you link to external links (which is what we’ll be doing in the next step for your shop) so we’ll bypass their built in system and add our own widget.

The tutorial I used to do this to do this was written by Haptree and can be found here (opens in a new window). It also explains in detail how to play around with the colours for your links and also how to create a link page for related posts (for example all your tutorial posts, or posts that mention your products.

Two small sections of code need added to your template to give you a linkbar so follow the instructions in the link and then go to your dashboard and click on the ‘layout’, ‘page elements’ tab. You should see your new Linkbar widget under your header. Click on ‘edit’ and that takes us to the next step...

Go to step two - Link to my blog home page and my shop with navigation tabs