Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Recently I ventured across Twitter Backgrounds Gallery, a website that showcases Twitter users’ backgrounds. The site also allows users to rate each others’ backgrounds on a star rating system. This system does not allow users to sign up to submit, but rather suggest your background to their Twitter account (@TwitterBGallery ).

This is a fun tool for you if you are on Twitter and have spare time to check out other profiles. Some of the backgrounds are a bit inspirational too! They even share some articles to help you make your Twitter background be effective if you want people to follow you. This includes concepts you should consider while designing, which are great for both graphic designers and novices.

Twitter Backgrounds Gallery also has a contest area where there are occasional contests featured.

I love to make emoticons (smileys.) Although I offer a plenty of smiley sets for free download on my own site, here are 5 places with Unique Emoticons. Emoticons are not easy to make, despite the fact they look small. They take a lot of creativity and patience to make sure you can tell what the image is in so few pixels. You will not find them anywhere else.

This cute and yummy looking pixel emoticon is one of several that Kao-Ani offers for download. Each look to be inspired by Japanese anime style characters and a little of the creator’s (Natasja) love of pixelling and cuteness. Other smileys available at Kao-Ani are in the form of animals, girl faces, and even a ghost! Yes, these may be girly, but anyone can see these are quality smileys are worth showcasing.

Sidney Collins of BubblesSOC, also knowns as Bubs, offers a very simple smiley set for those who like simple. It is a variation of typing out anime smiley faces while chatting with others. Example: (o_O). However, some of them are animated and have a few extras. My favorite out of the set is the animated angry emoticon where it is shaking its head with disappointment, and looks quite disgruntled.

DeviantArt user, darkmoon3636 is pretty notorious when it comes to making emoticons. A lot of this graphic artist’s work is used on DeviantArt. Each smiley is unique and some even have scenes like the surfing emoticon. Some are animated. The artist allows her emoticons to be used anywhere only if credit is given.

This graphic artist, LeoLeonardo hails from Deviantart too and named The Emoticon Pope. A lot of detail goes into some of the scenes that involve emoticons. One is an emoticon jumping off a building and there is a Rick Roll smiley too! The Emoticon Pope even gives pointers to others on how to make emoticons. This artist has created more than a hundred different emoticons. Just imagine the time spent on all of them. I would like to say – All Hail The Emoticon Pope!

MazeGuy has a lot of different pixel smilies like Mario, symbols, animals, and more. MazeGuy even has an emoticon balloon maker where you can put what you want your smilies to say in a speach bubble. This allows you to feel like you had a hand in making your own emoticons! Mike Perucci, the site owner, even has written a smiley tutorial of his own.

What do you think of these? What other sites do you think offer great emoticons?

Yep, it is true! I have put together some simple backgrounds you can use for Twitter. These are different from the other backgrounds I have put up in the past as they are full size at 1300×1500 pixels and should cover your entire background instead of tile.

Here are a few examples. The rest can be sen on the Twitter backgrounds page.

It is a new addition to the site since the new layout less than two weeks ago. Please remember to pass the word about them if you like them or think they would be a great resource for other Twitter users.

I have also decided to put on the Twitter Backgrounds page that I offer services to do custom twitter backgrounds since there are plenty of people who are on Twitter for business reasons. I am charging $10, which is pretty cheap. To inquire more about it you can use the contact form here at Blondish.

Well, as usual, I end up stumbling on something by chance and this time is was CrowdSpring.com. CrowdSpring is a site that gives freelancers a way to put their best work forward instead of bidding. How? Well, when you sign up and fill out your portfolio, you can go and browse the job postings. When you find one, click on the details of that job, and you can get right to work.

Instead of putting out a proposal in words, you are submitting your work for the buyer’s consideration. The best work chosen is the person that will be paid. Yes, it seems like a big contest, but how many times have you seen bids on other freelance sites get negative reviews because they could not keep their side of the deal. The great thing is that these places already paid and the money is kept in escrow by CrowdSpring, so if you are chosen, you will be paid.

Pretty cool, huh?

Projects that are posted can be for logo design, web design, general graphic design, and even print design. It is free to join.

Do you participate in any freelance websites? Have you tried CrowdSpring?

Technically Blondish.net turned 3 years old during May. With the layout to be unveiled, it will be the 8th version. If all goes well with this version, I will be retiring the others (Premium Blondish and Mustang), and giving them out as free WordPress layouts. I have already been asked about the Premium Blondish layout and I will strip it of the ‘blondish’ information for the layout. If anyone wants customizations of it, I charge $50 and I allow you to do anything you like, plus you get support for your layouts. (Yeah, sorry, had to slip that in, but I have already done a few customs using this template.)

I am a bit late on a layout change, but the one previewed (It is just the top part), should be up and unveiled by Sunday evening! Some of the things on the site are getting moved to their more comfortable places, like another domain of mine. This is all tied in with the re-focus of the blog that I had mentioned months ago. Some of the pages will have their own templates. I am hoping with WP-PageNavi and Yoast Breadcrumbs to do away with the older navigation to come up with something more clean. From the preview, you can see that it will retain the black, white, pink and golden tones. The guitar is a vector I made. In fact, I will have a vector tutorial on it ready as a wonderful addition.

I have also asked a few people to please write some guest posts. I would not mind if anyone else wanted to. Just give me a shout out at Twitter or here in my comments.

So, what do you think? Does the preview image look promising?

A little strained for time, hence I did not update the layout page, but there are now 5 new WordPress layouts. All of the layouts are similar in layout format, but the graphics are different. I just felt like playing around with the same layout to do several things. I hope to have more of this type, as well as another layout format series too. I did this because it gives more choices, especially for those who may like the format, but not the graphics or one, but perhaps another layout.

Catty
2 column simple layout

Cherry Blossom Tree
2 column simple layout

Mousey Pencil
2 column simple layout

Pixel Chickadee
2 column simple layout

Winged
2 column simple layout

Yes, that is right… five more desktop wallpapers available for download.

All wallpapers come in JPEG format and 3 different resolutions: 800×600, 1024×768, and 1280×1024. The previous wallpapers were greatly welcomed. I even got tips in my paypal from them so I must have done something right.

Anyway… feel free to use them. If you want to use the images for layouts, you can. I even can provide the PNG format of each of them for clarity, but you will have to use the contact form to request the one you need.

Been busy at making graphics once again. In fact, 11 new emoticon smilies! After making the rounded smilies, I needed to make extras that matched all of the colors. Also, I added more colors to the bubble saying emoticon (ex: smilies that said ‘whoa!’ or ‘lol’.)

Here are examples of these:

This makes the total of different emoticons offered at 37! That is quite a bit, especially a variety of new characters that will be introduced soon too!