A fun tool to use either in a blog post or in your sidebar from time to time is a little blog poll. There are lots of free poll sites out there where you basically setup an account and enter the question you would like to ask and then a few possible answers for your blog readers to choose from. Here’s a few examples with a couple questions regarding blogs that I’d love to get your opinions on.

There are plenty of other free polling sites out there but these are two of my favorites. Very simple to use and I think they look nice. Between the two I probably prefer Toluna over PollDaddy. If you’ve posted polls on your blog using another service I’d love to hear reviews. And If you post a poll on your own blog let me know and I’ll head on over and vote.

Back to designing. Needed a little break and something that didn’t require much creativity for a few minutes. Hopefully I’ll have more blog features to post soon.

Okay, I swear that I don’t have a requirement on my design questionnaire that each client be adorable. Really I don’t. But seriously, look at these ladies. I’m sure I’ve said it before but I truly feel so lucky to meet such talented and inspiring people in this new journey of mine.

Carissa is also in the middle of a big move but we managed to complete her design even while she’s been in route to their new home. Just in time for her to post about their traveling adventures and life in a new town.

She has an online shop where she sells the absolute coolest jewelry and art. Recognize those wings in the banner here in a framed piece from her store?! As soon as I saw her creations I knew we had to include something of hers in the banner design. I must say I have also become a big fan of blogger throughout the process of creating the look we came up with for Carissa’s blog.

Here’s a bit about the design process… I wanted the wings and the flower from her logo to extend off the edges of the papers in the banner. At the same time I knew that I would want the text below the banner to be lined up with the paper edges. It took a lot of playing around but we got it to work and it would’ve cost her $15 per month to pull that off in typepad. Can’t really beat getting the look you want and saving $15 a month.

So anyway, back to Carissa… I love what she has to say about herself in her profile:

I am the brown eyed fox… better known as mom to three fun and frilly girls (one being of the four legged breed) and wife to one super guy! I got my brown eyes from my parents at birth and my "foxy" last name from my husband. I am a very lucky gal… I have an incredible family… really awesome friends… big dreams and the love of Jesus Christ! I am truly blessed!

She’s stylish…

and I have to know Carissa, did you get these adorable shoes??

She’s a woman of faith…I’d imagine sad to be leaving what looks to be a fantastic church in their move to a different state. She did post about a pastor who preaches right around the corner from me though. Maybe her next move should be to Grandville, MI.

Check out the Brown Eyed Fox blog and after you say hi head on over to her shop and check out her beautiful things for sale. Let me know if you did. I’d love to see what you bought.

Kay, more blogs to finish and a book to listen to. Back with more later and a post or two this week with some tips for bloggers.

Hope everyone’s having a great weekend.

Danielle is a homeschooling mom to two beautiful little girls. Her blog is truly about… journeys in parenting, crafting & keeping up with the laundry.  A little bit of everything. And oh how I love that I got to use the word serendipitous in a blog banner as it’s one of my favorite words of all time.

We finished up her blog design just in time for her to make a big move with her family to Philadelphia. How exciting!!

They bought this beautiful home that I’m sure she’ll be posting more pictures of once they move.

Is that front porch divine or what?! There’s even real shudders on the window. Like moving shutters. I just love houses with character and I can tell from her photos that this one has tons.

My favorite post on her blog so far is the one about her youngest daughter’s fairy theme birthday party. Complete with fairy wings, toadstool cupcakes and all set in a garden in Delaware that has a troll bridge, a frog hollow and a faerie cottage. How fun is that?!

Just look at that spread? She definitely knows how to throw a party!

Danielle was so fun to work with and once she found the perfect kit for her style over in Shabby Miss Jenn’s shop it all came together quite perfectly. Sparkles, buttons, stitching…what more could a blog need?! We also did some fun coordinating titles for her sidebar. You can see the full design here and go wish her a belated happy birthday and a safe move.

Melody is definitely one hip momma. I stumbled across her blog through this post titled ‘cute melody’ on the daily relish blog which I had just recently discovered. So first of all I totally agreed that Melody is indeed cute. 

And incredibly sweet ta’ boot. 

I think the first post I stumbled across was an update on their house project. If I could build a house I think this is exactly the kind of look I’d go for.

Isn’t it going to be gorgeous?! You can just tell.  So much character.

Melody’s blog is full of amazing photos of her adorable hip daughters. It was so hard to pick two favorite photos for her banner. And she plans to keep the photos updated so you’ll want to stay tuned for the new look every now and then. A fun way to change things up without doing a total remodel. 

One of the photos that I considered using but the colors just didn’t work…

Are her girls hip or what?!

Wish I lived in San Antonio so I could hang out with Melody on her monthly girls night out or see how she gets such great shots with her camera.

I’ve got a few more recent projects to share hopefully by the end of the weekend & I’m hoping to be completely caught up & finished with my current orders by Sunday so stay tuned for more.

Jo-Anne Coletti of Vintage Rose Collection wanted a banner that complimented her photos and paintings using subtle touches of pink with shades of white and cream in the design and this is what we came up with. I LOVE how the fontwork turned out on this one and I even used some of the elements from her Most romantic Scrapbook CD.

Jo-Anne is an artist who paints the most beautiful rose paintings…

Her home and paintings have been featured in numerous Romantic Country and Romantic Homes magazines. She also has a boutique online where she sells her original paintings as well as gorgeous vintage finds.

She blogs about her art, her home, her garden, tips on decorating and entertaining and her beautiful (and fun!) family.

I feel very fortunate to get to work so closely with such incredibly talented women. Women I’d have never gotten to know if it weren’t for this new business adventure.

Kay, break over, back to work on finishing up a couple more designs tonight. I had to work a full time schedule on my regular jobs this past week and a half so the design time has severely suffered but I’ve got a couple days off to focus on design and then a weekend all by my lonesome so I’ll be designing to my hearts content for the next few days. And I hesitate to even say it but I’m even feeling especially creative so with a little luck I’ll have lots more to share here very soon.

Until then…

The above banner was designed for Sanya at In The Pink Antiques. She has a beautiful shop online where she’s been selling gorgeous vintage pieces and flea market finds like this stunning plate for 8 years now but just recently started blogging.

She also does event planning and floral arrangements with a specialty in using vintage pieces to keep once the flowers fade. How genius is that?! My favorite arrangement…

And how wonderful would it be to have a few friends over on a beautiful afternoon and sit around a table that looks like this?!?

Her home has also been featured in Romantic Homes and Decorate with Paint magazines and you can see why…

Isn’t that blue couch just amazing?! And the touches of green?!?!

Sanya was a delight to work with and even her talented husband got involved in the design. The subtle stripes behind the title were his idea to match the logo on the website and it turned out beautifully. You can see the complete design and more of Sanya’s beautiful photos by visiting her blog here.

Enjoy!

I know I’ve talked about this a few times on my regular blog but I think it deserves a full post here on my design blog. I had been using Windows Live Writer to post to my Typepad blog for months and one of the big question marks for me in regards to the decision to switch to Wordpress was whether or not I’d still be able to use this software. Fortunately I found out that indeed I can. I’ve also recommended it to Blogger clients who’ve said that it worked great for them too so regardless of which blogging service you use this software should work like a charm.

You can download the free software here.

What I love about it:

• You can work on a post offline. For me that means I can blog on a lunch hour without having to go somewhere with wireless.
• You can see what your post will look like before publishing. Line breakes, photo sizes and how the words will/won’t wrap around the photos, etc.
• You have better control over your images in a post. Options to change the size easily, add a drop shadow or white border, even a watermark
• You can easily add links. You can even add links to a glossary so that when you type certain words/names and you highlight them and click the link button it remembers the web address assigned to that wording.

I thought I’d post just a few screenshots to help with the setup to get you up and running if you’d like to try it. 

You can find this screen by clicking on the ‘weblog’ menu at the top of the screen and choosing ‘add weblog account’. For Blogger, Typepad and Wordpress you’ll want to select ‘another weblog service’ and click next.

Here you’ll enter the full web address for your blog and your username and password for that particular blog and click next again. At this point Live Writer goes through a process of gaining access to publish to your blog directly as well as downloading the current settings information to allow you to see your posts exactly as they would appear in your blog online.

The above screen view shows ‘web preview’ mode in Live Writer. Personally I prefer to edit my posts in ‘web layout’ mode. Just a little less distracting because it shows the margins accurately and even the background but it removes the sidebar and header images.

I always have ’sidebar’ checked in the view menu particularly so that I can easily edit my images there but it also shows a nice list of any drafts that I might have and recent posts in case I need to edit/update something in those. You can even pull up posts that weren’t originally composed in Live Writer by clicking ‘more…’ in the recently posted area of the sidebar.

If you use categories you may also want to keep the ‘properties’ panel checked to remind you to add the proper category before publishing. I’ve just begun to use categories so it’s something I tend to forget unless the option’s right in front of me.

If you change your column settings or update your blog header etc. you can easily update your Live Writer by going to ‘edit weblog settings’ under the weblog menu and click on ‘update style’ under the editing option. It will automatically log in and download the information it needs to show your posts accurately with the new settings. Genius!

There are lots of other options including spell check, map and video inserts, categories/tagging. You can even set up multiple blogs to post to. They seem to have thought of everything.

If you give it a try I’d love to hear what you think of it. Post your review here or any questions you have and I’ll try to help if I can.

Denise and Heather own a beautiful shop in Oklahoma City. I had the hardest time deciding which of the gorgeous photos they sent to possibly use in the blog design but I kept coming back to this stunning painting of a chandelier that Heather painted in the entry of her own home.  You can read about it and see more photos here.

I think I’d be in big trouble if I lived near their store. How beautiful is this???

And if their boutique is that gorgeous you know the rooms of their homes are just as beautiful. Here’s one of my favorites. I don’t think I would ever need to leave this room. And that fabulous brick and stone wall…wallpaper! You can read all about how it was done in this post.

They’re currently considering offering some of their items online. Here’s a few things I’ve spotted in their posts that I’m hoping show up in the online shoppe.

Or anything in this post here.

So stay tuned and add them to your bloglines. You can check out the entire design here. I LOVE animal prints so I had a lot of fun on this one as you will see.

Be back soon with more blogs to share.

I’d like to introduce you to someone who I only just ‘met’ 5 days ago and she’s very quickly become one of my favorite people on the planet. Let me back up a bit to Thursday when I received an e-mail from Tara Frey of Bella Pink saying she’d been given my name by the incredibly sweet Shabby Miss Jenn. Jenn I hope you got my e-mail that I sent through your website.  I may have been too wordy. Well, Tara (who I’ll have more to say about her fabulousness in future posts but right now this one’s all about Fifi) gave Fifi my name and told her I would be perfect for the job of setting up her new blog, which is what I’ve been busy doing the past few days. I’ve learned a lot and had so much fun and I’m excited to get to work on the next blog. Sounds like I’ve already got a few lined up. Yay! So here’s what we came up with for Fifi’s banner but we did a lot of fun stuff in other areas of the blog so you’ll definitely want to check it out.

So what makes Fifi fabulous in my book?

• She signs her e-mails with x’s and o’s
• She called Sunday afternoon just to chat and she has the perfect amount of french accent that I could’ve listened to her talk all afternoon but instead she seemed genuinely interested in little ‘ol me.
• She crafty in an elegant but whimsical way that I adore, choosing photos to use for her banner was nearly impossible!
• She grew up in Paris
• She now lives in a little cottage that has more character in each room than most people have in a house probably 3 times the size.
• She has a cabana and a hammock that are to die for.
• She’s a freelance writer and photo stylist for a number of national magazines. Half of her cover designs I actually have sitting in my magazine collection and one of them I even kept setting out on my ottoman long after it’s published date just because the cover itself was inspiring to me every time I looked at it. What are these fabulous magazines you might ask? You can see a few in her sidebar on the blog but among the list are magazines like Cottage Style, Creative Home, Romantic Country, Home Companion, Coastal Living, Style, Windows & Walls, and that’s just to name a few.
• She’s writing a book. I can’t even journal on a scrapbook page and she’s writing a whole BOOK!
• Within less than two days of her blog going live it’s been viewed over 2,000 times. That’s a lot of people who must’ve known how fabulous fifi was long before I had the pleasure of meeting her.

Kay, the list could go on and on but mostly she’s fabulous for being so sweet and giving me the opportunity to play with her fabulous photos and create a place where she can share her fabulousness with others here on the web. One comment left on Fifi’s blog already seemed to say it perfectly…

“I can’t stress enough how much I am enjoying your blog!!  It feels like an e-magazine.  Perhaps waiting for my favorite magazines in the mail won’t be as painful now that I have found YOU!!” ~ Britta

Fifi, if you’re reading this, thank you again for this opportunity. I have enjoyed working with you SO much.

So, other than learning a TON of new stuff about Typepad the past few days and putting together something as fabulous as I could come up with for Fifi I’ve been working also on the Eclectic Whimsy website and have that just about ready to go live with…again…but this time different. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish that up later today. I haven’t spent any time in the sewing studio but hope to do that a little today too.

Lots more that I wanted to post about but it’s a GORGEOUS day and my neighbor Nikki will be here any minute to pick me and the dogs up to head to the dog park. I’ll be taking the camera so hopefully I’ll have long overdue pics of Pixel. Hopefully I’ll have time to blog more later tonight.