I am creating wordpress themes!  If you want to see what I have so far go check out my main site .

We’ve been doing some work in the store re-modeling and re-arranging and I have plans for next year to draw in more customers.  I came across www.Threadsmith.com.  They have an easy interface for creating your own custom embroidery.   In addition to shirts and personalized baby gifts they have a denim shirt, much like the ones we sell.  It’s a good shirt to wear like a uniform but it doesn’t have the store name on it.  I played around with a design and the store name and it looked great.  Since it’s embroidery and not printing I’ll have to tweak the design I have to work with embroidery but it should work.  If I want to re-vamp the store it’s an idea to look into.   They have a huge variety of products.  More than most sites like this.  They even have a santa hat.  That’s something I’ve never seen.  :)  I’m looking at the laptop backpack right now.

I’ve added a few new designs in my Zazzle store.  Golden Angel is on a mug and there are some Christian T-shirt designs.  I’m working on more but I don’t know if I’ll get much done in the next week with the weather they’re predicting.

I’m quite sick of snow.

Both my Architectural Digest and my House Beautiful came in the mail today. I’m stuck at work and browsing through both and they’re making me wish I were retired, independently wealthy and could could stay home and do nothing but design. I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for re-arranging the living room but it’s a near impossibility to change the structure I’m afraid. Architecturally it’s a beautiful home but it was designed in the 80’s. The room has two focal points, a huge brick wall with large fireplace and on either side two deep arches. One is open for holding firewood and the other was enclosed with wood to hold the tv and entertainment system. The problem is it won’t hold a large tv. Above that is a section that was customize to hold tapes. Yes, tapes. Not Cd’s. Ideally, the tv should be in the cabinet with the sofa and chairs facing both it and the fireplace. Behind that is a large built-in bar of deep mahogany and brass Versace-esq lion heads (it’s beautiful). That would leave the space where the tv is now open for a large comfy chair and table for sitting and reading or whatnot.
No matter what I do, the arrangement of the room isn’t changeable without downsizing the tv. Unfortunately, we’re all used to it by now. HGTV just isn’t the same on a small screen. (neither is a Kings game :))

I wish HGTV had a segment like ‘Help me arrange this room!’. I’d apply in a heartbeat.

…and I didn’t manage to break the website. Out of all of the options out there Joomla seemed to have the most to offer with regard to content management. Soon I’ll have E-Cards available. I’m still looking into extensions to add to the site but for now I’m through. It took me 3 days to figure out as far as I got so the rest will have to wait.

It’s a work in progress but here’s my first attempt at an animated logo. Well, I say first attempt but it’s actually the 15th version of this attempt that took a day and a half to get to this point.

I’m getting enough of a headache doing the product research online that I am when I encounter possibly the worst designed site I’ve ever seen. I wont be rude and link directly to it but it mainly consisted of a large circle surrounded by smaller colored circles. The colored circles were the navigation. You couldn’t see the links until you mouse-over the circles and depending on your cursor you only caught a glimpse if you had to move your cursor off to read it.

Whoever designed that site failed miserably.

Over on the sidebar is the widget for the ‘Giveaway of the day’. Today it’s a watermarking program that’s normally sold for $29.95. I downloaded it but haven’t had time to really and truly try it out. That’ll have to wait until I get back from Vegas but while I usually create my own watermarks for images I allow on the internet, I’m curious to see how this program works. Lately there have been a number of websites popping up where people are selling web designs made from copyrighted images. Sometimes watermarking can deter these thieves, not always but if you make it difficult for them to remove the watermark they are less likely to steal your work. On every image I post online I hide a watermark to prove it’s mine. At first glance you can’t see it so you wouldn’t think to look for it but if I had to prove to someone’s ISP that their customer is guilty of copyright infringement, I can.

A while back my Grandma gave me a box full of Grandpa’s sermons and notes. He typed a lot of them and it was interesting reading pages that went back further than me almost. It gave me the idea to compile them and put it all in book form. Not a lot of people would be interested I’m afraid but I have tons of family who would love it. I did consider how to Self Publish something like this where I could control every aspect of it. A company like Author House is a good place to start. They’ll offer lots of help and you can remain in control of design and cover art. (my specialty ) It’s definitely worth looking into if I ever get my project finished.