Yearly wrap up

Hi everyone.  I know most bloggers chose to sign off before the holidays, however that was the beginning of my blogging so while I'm a bit late in the game, it is time for the last post of the year.  First off I hope that everyone has a fantastic and safe New Year's Eve.  There will be a big post with all the company resolutions and what not.  For now I just wanted to say thank you for reading and stay tuned for some great new things!  For those of you that are just tuning in, this was the first year for Line-ily's existence and I am so incredibly happy that I was able to finally get this dream of mine up and running.  In the few short months that the company has been going, I've been able to purchase some fantastic equipment that will greatly help expand the company capabilities in 2011.  Thank you all for your continuous support and cheers to a fantastic new year.

Oh Paper Source!

First off and foremost I have to apologize for the quality of the images I'm about to show you.  They're bad.  Really bad.  I would have had semi-decent pictures if it wasn't for several problems.  Like having my camera batteries AND the backups die.  Or having a better phone.  Or if more than one light in my ceiling fan was working (this morning they blew and there was only one replacement bulb in the house).  I'm just saying, there's a lot of things that cause bad pictures and I have them all.  That being said, I photoshopped these suckers as much as they would allow so I can show you all the goodies I got!  Are you ready?  Really ready?!?!  Ok here we go...the Paper Source expedition produced a bill of $180some and lots of awesome things like these:

Items not shown include awesome leaf paper and Envelope Liner Patterns...details to follow

Ok so you can see that I've numbered the items because simply that picture is a hot mess.  Ok its not even hot, its just a mess.  But I've included numbers so you can follow along!  I know, I'm just too nice. So in case you couldn't tell my trip to Paper Source was very fruitful.  I had a great time looking at everything and obviously treated myself...a lot (hey it was my birthday...everyone deserves to be spoiled on their birthday).  I've listed the items in case any of them sound interesting or if you want to see what on earth I'm talking about because no, actually, you can't see that blob.

1.  Pink Embossing heat tool

2.  PVA book binding glue (I see notepads in the future)

3.  Adhesive Remover (I have a love/hate relationship with spray adhesive so hopefully this helps with that)

4.  Paper Source Swatchbook

5.  Lowercase alphabet stamps

6.  Embossing powder

7.  cards (clearance)

8.-11.  business cards (also in hot pink, peacock and papaya)

12. thanks stamp

13. duster brush

14.  VersaMarker pen

15.  circle cutter (way cooler than the old one that broke on the first try)

16. delete eraser (mine says delete but I guess they stopped making it)

17.  hot pink glitter wrap

18. cards (clearance)

19. Super tacky tape

20.  Peacock envelopes

21.  White ink

22. Peacock notecards

I also made my first envelope liner using the template and clearance paper from the store:

I obviously had a great time exploring the store.  Hopefully I can sneak another visit in soon!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas (break)

For those of you that don't know, I literally eat, sleep, breathe design.  No really, its sadly true.  I work a full time job doing graphic design and a bit of web design for another company, I come home and I work on my Flash and Web Design certificate courses and when I haven't quite gotten my fill, I do freelance design work too!  Normally I love love LOVE this pattern but I do feel a bit bogged down lately.  Time for a confession.  I'm behind.  Way behind.  Not even a little behind.  Let's put it this way...I'm frazzled beyond all recognition.  I have even started to look like this:

Photo Courtesy of Dave-F

Ok maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it is mostly true.  I wrote out a list of everything I need to do for school and I am down to 39 weeks to complete 46 assignments and 3 resubmissions.  If you hear some random screaming, please ignore it, its just me.  I am one of those insane people that claims "I thrive on pressure."  Which is very true, the more that I have to do, the more I feel like accomplishing which means that I get a lot done.  However, even I (queen of multitasking) am prone to burnout.  Right now I'd say I'm teetering very dangerously on the stress burnout seesaw of life.  See?  Its bad enough that I'm making bad metaphors.  Thankfully tomorrow is my last day of full-time work for the week, followed by a 3-day work week next week.  Don't get me wrong, I love my job!  I really do mean that too.  I just need to get a little more ahead on my schoolwork and remove all these Christmas presents from my bedroom.  Come on Christmas break!  In a little under 24 hours I will be doing my happy dance in my pajamas simply because I can and my work week will be over so I can enjoy my itty bitty break and start to play a bit of catchup with my schoolwork!

What do you do to prevent burnout?

301 redirects on Godaddy

Wow.  I cannot begin to tell you how much a pain this was.  Keep in mind, that I am not a super coder (yet), so things like a 301 redirect tend to baffle me.  As they should!  This is not something I recommend doing unless you either A. Know what you're doing B. Don't care what happens to the website or C. Have read enough about 301 redirects to know what you're doing.

In short, there are many fantastic articles in the world about .htaccess files, 301redirects, so on and so on.  This is not meant for every browser.  I'm not endorsed by GoDaddy in any way shape or form (did you not see that second section where I called the whole process a pain), I just don't want somebody taking down a server like I did trying to redirect a page.  It's way too stressful.  Also, I don't know how this works with other hosts, since I'm using GoDaddy, that is all this tutorial is about.

So now that I've gotten all that jabbering out of the way, I'm pleased to present you with a step by step tutorial on a 301 redirect using GoDaddy.  A 301 redirect (the technical name) is kinda like telling the internet that you are going to move your webpage and its going to like it.  For this example, I chose to make http://www.line-ily.com redirect to http://line-ily.com which allows for search engine optimization to recognize that both versions are the same type.  If you're a visual person like me, not to worry, I have several pictures.  Are you ready?  Deep breath!  Let's go.

1.  Log into your account manager.  In other words, go to Godaddy.com and click the my products tab.  You will then be shown a link that looks something like this:

As you can see, I hadn't logged in by this point.  Click any of the links and log in.

2.  Click on the web hosting area.  I've chosen to highlight this item in a light blue box (all important aspects in this tutorial will likewise be highlighted as such).

3.  Select the site on which hosting you would like to alter and click the launch button.

4.  This is the screen that will appear next.  Select the content area.

5.  Select the "Sites Redirect" option.

6. Here comes the fun part.  As you can see I've already set up my redirect.  For this process, hit New Redirect.

7.  Here is where things get a little tricky.  Not to panic though, once I figured out this method, I literally was able to redirect my site in under five minutes from the point of logging in to the point of making sure it worked.  Here is where you redirect your site.  Notice the From tab is the current selected tab, you will not be able to move to the To tab until this portion is filled out.  In this tab, you want to enter the name of your Godaddy hosted domain in the domain area simply in the format of yourdomain.com (please don't enter yourdomain.com, I might have to laugh at you).  So for my example, I entered line-ily.com , note that I did not use the http:// or www. format.  This is key.  Under the redirect options, there are the choices "With and Without" (say if I wanted to redirect line-ily.com to laurelrocks.com), only with (which is what I selected to turn www.line-ily.com to line-ily.com), and only without (if I wanted to do the reverse and make line-ily.com read only as www.line-ily.com).  As I mentioned, for this instance, I selected with www. prefix.

8.  Now you may hit the To tab.  Choose whether you would like to use a http:// or https:// prefix and then enter the domain that you want the site to which you want traffic redirected. Hit the next button and you're done!

I hope this is able to help someone out there.  I went through literally about 8 hours of trying to figure this out, followed by several hours of cleaning up messes and panicking and wondering if I had caused my site permanent damage.  If you use this, please let me know how it goes for you or if you have any questions.

On ugly thank you cards

Now I'm not a negative person normally, however I have to get something off my chest.  I hate the ugly thank you cards that my family tends to buy.  As a graphic designer, I'm semi-ashamed to admit this since I can easily make my own, but the holidays always seem to be a chaotic time and I seem to grab whatever thank you cards I can find.  My extended family is rather large and my birthday is Christmas Eve, so there are usually about 20 or so cards going out after the holiday season.  That being said, the cards that typically come in the bigger packs are hideous.  I don't quite see how horrible typography in poorly embossed silver truly says "Thank you for that wonderful gift!"  I had this conversation a few days ago with my mother and said something about designing my own cards, but as she mentioned, by the time I have a chance to make my own cards, I'll completely have forgotten about making them.  In the famous words of Barney Stinson, "Challenge accepted!"  I believe I'll have to add that to my New Years Resolutions (come back on the first to check that out)... maybe I'll make my own holiday cards too.  Granted that I'll probably be making these cards in late summer/early fall, they should be ready in plenty of time.  Once they're done, I'll be sure to put share them in the Etsy shop because nobody should have to buy ugly cards!

I'm hoping in the meantime that I can find some acceptable cards when I go to Paper-Source next this week.  How did that happen?  Wow, just five days until my Annapolis adventure begins!  Time always tends to fly from roughly Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

Hope everyone's holiday madness is wrapping up and that you're able to relax and enjoy the season!

1 week to go!

For those of you that don't know...my birthday is in a week.  Ok yeah, sure that's exciting...I mean 24 on the 24th...wow I'm getting old!  Actually the REALLY exciting part is the birthday plans.  Are you ready?  Really ready?  I'm making my first ever trip to

I know it may be hard to believe that I've never been to Paper Source, especially considering I only live an hour away from their Annapolis store.  The important thing though is that I'm finally making it! For those of you that don't know, from my understanding, Paper Source is a Mecca of sorts for graphic designers alike.  Perhaps that is a bit extreme.  The website describes itself as this:

Paper Source is a premier paperie and retail store offering a unique selection of fine and artisanal papers, stationery, invitations, gift wrap, greeting cards, quirky gifts and a custom collection of envelopes and cards. Paper Source offers an original and distinctive aesthetic, with a color palette and proprietary designs that are developed and created exclusively by us. 

Oh yes please!  Also, not mentioned there, but apparently a HUGE highlight for brides, custom envelope liners.  Its ok, I know exactly how lame it sounds when you put it like that.  Let me try to explain this in bridal terms.  Imagine a bride who has picked the perfect color scheme for her wedding, patterns used on her invitations, the decorations for the reception.  Of course the invitations come with nasty white envelopes.  Sure those envelopes are fine for holiday cards or birthday cards but this is a wedding we're talking about!  At Paper Source you can find not only the envelopes you want in your color scheme but also line the envelopes with complementing colors and patterns.  Does it get much cooler?  I didn't think so.  At least that's what I heard around the webosphere (particularly buzzing from Wedding Bee was referenced).

Now in all fairness, since I gave this store such a rave review, I have to be completely fair.  I have been a long time customer of Paper and More, a personal favorite paper store.  The rates there are very decent, shipping is usually faster than quoted and I love that you can buy a sample of almost anything before buying paper or envelopes in bulk.  I'm just afraid that they don't offer the custom envelope liners.  Not that in the large scheme of things that's important, but I'm a firm believer in the small touches making all the difference.  I'll update again soon after my visit!

Yudu, do you?

That's right ladies and gents, my brand spankin' new yudu machine has finally arrived.  Let me start back at the beginning.  I accidentally started freelancing in August.  I'm sure you're wondering how one accidentally starts freelancing.  I'm not sure myself.  I blame it partially on my being a huge push over.  Now don't get any ideas or try to go test it, but I totally am when it comes to my friends.  So just when I had gotten into the rhythm of balancing school and a new job, a friend called and said that her company needed some branding work done.  What was I going to do, say no?  So long story short, I landed a nice profitable job that has not only enhanced my portfolio but also gave me a little money to play with.  Well not play with but more or less sink into useful things, like some very boring business books and a few additions to my design library.  So while everyone else did their Black Friday shopping, I was doing some homework when I felt the need to see if the price on a Yudu screenprinting system had dropped.  Oh boy did it ever!  So now I am the proud owner of this beautiful machine and just need a little time to catch up on some homework before taking a test spin.  Get ready for some great screenprinted designs coming in early 2011!