Bleek Blog

I just received an email from Jimmy Atkinson from WHDb informing me that I had been included in their list titled 100 Awesome Webmaster Blogs by and for Women. WHDb is a Web Hosting Database website with some great articles on webmastering, web design, programming, gaming and more.

I am incredibly honoured (and humbled) to have my name included among those of Lea Alcantara, a talented designer, good friend, and mentor of mine at Lealea Design and Veerle of the well known Veerle's Blog, an amazing designer I can only aspire to be as talented as.

So please check out the write-up ... I'm in the design section, #49, and it's in alphabetical order according to section in case you are numerically challenged. I hadn't heard of WHDb until now, but I will definitely be checking back to see what else they come up with. I think the list they have compiled of women in the web is an excellent resource and will provide some great additions to my Google Feed Reader.

Thanks again Jimmy!

May 1st has always meant the start of wedding season to me. And, four years ago in 2004, I myself was married on May 1st (Happy Anniversary honey!). So there’s no wonder I associate May with weddings. I love weddings. I love the invitations, the buying of gifts, the watching the lovely bride walk down the aisle, the dinner and dancing afterwards. This weekend will be the first wedding my hubby and I will attend out of 5 or so this year, and I can’t wait!

Because I have weddings on the brain, I decided to dedicate this post to invitation and stationary design. The following images are of my own wedding invitations and other stationary pieces; including mini-guest books for each table, the CD favours we (well, okay I) made, and even the container for the kissing game we came up with. Being a graphic designer, I loved coming up with a monogram of our names that quickly became the brand and logo for our wedding. It even appeared on our cake! I admit I was a little OCD when it came to attention to detail, but it was this part of the planning process that made me the most relaxed and stress free bride out there. Design is my thing.

The most important part of a designer's site is their portfolio, and mine was in need of a major makeover. It was only ever intended as a temporary solution, and while I don't believe the quality of my work was lacking, the functionality of the portfolio itself sure was. All I really had was a thumbnail linked to a larger image. That's about it.

I've had a few people ask me where I found the leprechaun used in my March graphic and the invite designed for some friends (above), and the answer is that I created him. I didn't exactly draw him, although this technique could be loosely described as a form of digital illustration. What I really did is piece him together out of many different photos. I used the same process to make my weird theater illustration, as shown below.

I've been following through with my own personal New Year's resolution of tweaking various areas of my site, and I just came across a bug. Somehow all the comments on my blog entries (from about December or so) were set to Closed, which means they weren't showing up! I think somehow comment moderating was turned on in EE, but I honestly don't know how. I went through and approved all the comments that were valid, but there were also a ton of spam comments. Hopefully I didn't miss any real comments, but if you notice I haven't approved yours, please let me know! To fix the problem, I have put in captcha tags, and from my own tests it seems to be working well. I also turned off comment moderation.