I’ve been remiss in sharing a completed web design with you! Janet Edwards is an artist from Redlands that I met at the Redlands Art association. She does wonderful etchings of both the Inland Empire and the California coastline.

It has been a pleasure to be able to help this very accomplished artist create a web presence. For years people have been asking her if she has a website, and now she does!

I was able to make this completely customized website using Headway. What is Headway? It’s similar to a premium wordpress theme, but it’s so much more. It gives me the power to design a whole website, layout different pages with their own configurations, change the text colors, fonts, spacing, all without having to mess with CSS (don’t know what CSS even is? Don’t worry, you don’t need to – yay!). Headway has a visual editor where all those changes happen in real time, so you can see each change you make, as you make it. Headway also has amazing SEO functions built in – it takes what you write on your site and “feeds” it to Google in the right way so that people have an easier time finding you!

I love being able to quickly create a website that is unique, I feel powerful that I control how a site looks – it’s another type of creation I never imagined being important to me.

The reason I’m talking about this now is they have a HUUUUGE update coming this Friday, and with this update, they’re changing the way you purchase the theme; from a one-time, good-for-ever-no-matter-how-many-upgrades version, to a subscription basis. So if you’ve been thinking about getting a premium theme for your site, getting Headway before 3.0 is released will guarantee that you’ve got upgrades for life with the singe purchase! (All folks with earlier versions automatically get upgraded.)

Take a look at what’s coming from  Headway (does it make me a geek-extraordinaire to get get totally excited by this?):

Headway 3.0 Release Date from Headway Themes on Vimeo.

Please note: I’m a Headway affiliate; it has empowered me to take control of my little piece of the internet, and highly recommend them to all my buddies, both IRL and virtual!

I am SO happy to announce the redesign of Lesley Downie’s website.

Lesley is one of my very first web design customers. I built her first site last summer, with the design being built around her first book, which takes place in the Revolutionary War times (and the present, it’s a time travel book). Here’s a screen shot:

Fast forward 12 months, and Lesley had a clearer vision of her site, and I had some peeps (the graphic design awesomeness of Julie Cary, and the CSS magic of Mary Weise) to help make it happen! Lesley’s new vision was of a fun gal, who loves 50′s diners, vibrant aqua and melon colors, and who writes books for teens, ‘tweens and chicks!

TADAH!

Go check it out, it’s better in person, so to speak!

My moment? How lucky I am to have found these women, we can put our creative talents together and create something truly stupendous!!

alamodestuff Linda has started a weekly meetup based on taking a moment each week to really notice something as you go about your daily grind life. I need to do this. You may want to too – read more about it here:

If you’ve been reading here for awhile, you know that I’m hugely addicted to doing things myself! Although this mostly manifests itself in the fabric I dye, the art I make, and the patterns I design, I also love to tackle big home dec projects (like laying bamboo flooring in my studio and the boy’s bed and playroom) and web design! After using Headway to re-design my entire site myself, I decided to open up shop to design web sites for other people.

What is  Headway ? It’s similar to a premium wordpress theme, but it’s so much more. It gives me the power to design a whole website, layout different pages with their own configurations, change the text colors, fonts, spacing, all without having to mess with CSS (don’t know what CSS even is? Don’t worry, you don’t need to – yay!). Headway has a visual editor where all those changes happen in real time, so you can see each change you make, as you make it. Headway also has amazing SEO functions built in – it takes what you write on your site and “feeds” it to Google in the right way so that people have an easier time finding you!

I love being able to quickly create a website that is unique, I feel powerful that I control how a site looks – it’s another type of creation I never imagined being important to me.

The reason I’m talking about this now is they have a HUUUUGE update coming in late summer, and with this update, they’re changing the way you purchase the theme; from a one-time, good-for-ever-no-matter-how-many-upgrades version, to a subscription basis. So if you’ve been thinking about getting a premium theme for your site, getting Headway before 3.0 is released will guarantee that you’ve got upgrades for life with the singe purchase!

Take a look at what’s coming from  Headway (does it make me a geek-extraordinaire to get get totally excited by this?):

Whether or not you use Headway to actually design the site, there are all sorts of things you need to think about to get your site functioning awesomely. If the thought of getting all your ducks in a row send you reeling, you don’t know where to start, or you need some clear steps to follow, Tara Gentile’s Website Kickstart course may be just the thing for you!

Take a lookat how she walks you through all the steps to setting up your own blog/website!

Please note: I’m affiliate of these 2 wonderfully awesome tools, because they’ve empowered me to take control of my little piece of the internet, and highly recommend them to all my buddies, both IRL and virtual!

What a week! Please note, “move sites to new server” was not on the list this month. But move servers I did! Did you notice? I’m thinking not, but let me know if you did!

The reason I started designing websites was because when I moved my site from wordpress.com to a self-hosted site, all that beginning stuff was a big confusing mess to me. I hated not understanding that part of it. So a year plus later, with a bunch of web designs under my belt, I now have an understanding on how this whole “make blog go” thing works. I knew when something was funky and I could fix it myself, and I knew when call the hosting company to ask for help. I didn’t panic, I kept my cool, my servers are switched and I’m moving on. What a moment…stuff that used to baffle me does not any more! (Note: this does not my ANY stretch of the imagination mean I know close to a lot when it comes to web design, but I’m reflecting on how much more I understand now).

I didn’t get a chance to blog my very first rose of the season – several have popped open during the week. But after a non-stop day, there was enough light at 7:30 tonight for me to snap a couple…because I really needed to stop and smell them!

p.s. How funny is it that I screwed up and pushed “Publish” instead of scheduling the post for the morning. Yup – just when you brag about how you grokk something, you turn around and screw it up. The beauty of the internet, though, is that it’s very hard to break!

alamodestuff Linda has started a weekly meetup based on taking a moment each week to really notice something as you go about your daily grind life. I need to do this. You may want to too – read more about it here:

I’m posting over at alamode stuff today on the topic of Domain Registration. One of my bloggy friends almost got scammed, thank goodness she asked me about it first. Head on over to take a look!

I also have been woefully slow on blogging my thanks to Penny from Sew Take a Hike. I won this pincushion kit from Amy Lou Who at the beginning of March, and I’m just now getting around to say THANK YOU PENNY!

Finally, I’m just now getting around to shipping some wee mini art quilts from the early days of my artistic career. I announced in my latest newsletter I’d be drawing names from my subscribers to send these little guys to, I’m finally getting around to shipping them out! 

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