Friday Fun! ~ How to Make Favicons

Happy Friday everyone!

I had to share this fun thing I just learned how to do!

Have you ever wondered why some websites have cool little icons in the browser tabs and url bar when you visit them?

Well, it is as easy as copying and pasting a little string of code that refers to a picture you upload to your website.

I found a free service that allows you to generate and download a Favicon from any of your pictures and also gives you the string of code and directions to upload it to the root folder of your website.

Ta Da! It is like Magic!

I turned my two logo images for Pug Notes and Dog Art Studio into little Favicons!

Aren't they spiffy?

I know... the silliest things make me happy! :)

Speaking of happy...

I think Emmitt is preparing for a big event!

Two semi trucks just pulled up filled with mini meatloaf pans, ground beef, ketchup, balloons, a huge blow up swimming pool, slide, lounge chairs and a rock band!

Oh my gosh! My little puggy is up to something!

Do any of you know what this could be for?

Please leave me a note and let me know because all Emmitt does is smile when I ask him! :)

xoxoxo

m & e

Do you make it easy to connect?

Isn't is amazing how the momentum of something fun can bring change so quickly? In just a few months time, I went from thinking "What is Twitter?" to "Ooo! Can I follow this person's Tweets?"

I find myself looking for people's Social Networks to connect to whenever I meet them online or find a new blog.

Sometimes after some digging on someone's blog, I find a link to their Etsy shop or Twitter account, but I usually have to search around and it is almost never on their website.

I realized this weekend that I was not making it as easy as I could for people to connect to me either! If I am looking to find their Facebook page, why wouldn't someone be looking to connect to mine too?


So... besides listing them just on my blogroll, this weekend, I made a Social Networks link on both of my websites, Pug Notes and Dog Art Studio, so people could find all of my networks in one place.

I like these networks so much because I learn so much from other people. It is a fun and fast way to see things people are doing as well as sharing things I am enjoying with the world. I am not sure if anyone is reading them, but I love sending positive messages into the universe. It is exciting!

I also spent sometime redoing my Twitter background after watching Rebecca Collin's Twitter tutorials on her Art Dog Blog. Thank you Rebecca! You are always so inspiring and generous with your knowledge!

Shows and Events 2009

I am so excited to announce the Pug Notes Shows & Events Calendar for 2009.

This year we are going to have booths at the Pug Parties in ...

• San Diego - May 2, 2009


• Seattle - May 9, 2009


• Denver - TBD Fall 2009
  

We are so excited to pack our bags and meet lots of fun people and pugs!

If you are in the area, please stop by and say hello! We would love to meet you!

Speaking of fun things...

I just added some new Tabs to Pug Notes and Dog Art Studio to make getting to the 4 Pug and Dog Art Galleries even easier.

1. Pug Art
2. Dog Art
3. Holiday Art
4. Pencil Pugs
   

I know tabs might sound like a funny thing to be smiling about, but I'm kind of weird that way. :)

What small things make you smile during your day? I would love to know!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

The Pug Notes conversion is complete!

I am so excited to report that I have successfully completed the Pug Notes conversion over to Expression Web.

I have updated the look a bit and changed the navigation to match the look of Dog Art Studio.

It is cleaner on the front-end screens for the user and so easy for me to manage and update on the back-end. I couldn't be happier with the outcome. I am so glad I pushed through the discomfort of learning a new software program. It was totally worth it!

I also purchase the domain www.pugartstudio.com yesterday and redirected it to Pug Notes.

I feel I have built a brand name with the name Pug Notes, but this will give me the flexibility to change the name one day if I decide to. :)

Enough business talk! :)

It is almost the weekend and Emmitt asked if I would post one of his favorite videos of himself. It was recorded on superfast speed and Emmitt thinks if he could practice to match this in real life, he could win a gold medal in nose licking. :)

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Dog Art Studio is Open, Open, Open!

I am so excited to announce that Dog Art Studio is now open!

I have been working hard learning CSS and Expression Web over the last few months to build a new website featuring all the other breeds I also paint that I call Pug Pals.

They are all the pug friends that Pug Notes has also has available, but that I have not been able to optimize as their own website.

I hope to be able to reach all dog lovers with both websites.

What a fun process learning a new way to create and update both sites. I will now convert Pug Notes over to Expression Web and then when I want to make changes it will take 2 minutes instead of hours. All I need to do to update is to change one page that will filter globally throughout the site instead of opening 100 pages and making each change individually! I am so excited!

If you have time, please visit Dog Art Studio and let me know what you think. Your opinion means so much to me. Please be honest. I will not be able to improve it if I do not get ALL of the feedback. :)

CSS Class: My Final Web Template

My 6 week class - Intro to CSS - at the Eclectic Academy is complete.

I had a wonderful time learning about Cascading Style Sheets that allow you to change the styles you assign to your web pages through HTML quickly and easily.

It is excellent for people who have a big picture view when they write their code and know that they want a certain style attribute to change globally on their website.

A few weeks ago I posted about the first 3 weeks of my class.

This post will cover weeks 4 - 6 so you can see how it has changed.

In week 4 we learned alot!

• I hyperlinked the lessons in the navigation bar so you could look at the history of each week.
• added more links to my Pug Notes website in the navigation bar
• learned to add a stylized list of FAQ's in the body of the template
• added a footer area
• styled the links to change as you hovered over them and for the colors to change once you have visited the links.

Week 5 was alot more tame. It was an optional lesson to take the table structure out which did not work for me so I just changed the footer links to link back to my website, email and blog.

Week 6 was our final lesson and I had a great time...

• changing the scroll bar to orange
• adding a line divider and some space to the navigation bar
• and adding and stylizing a sign up form (that is a dummy - it does not work) for my newsletter.

It was a great class and I learned alot! I think my final page is successful and can be used in the future as a template for any web site I want to create.

I am excited to start the Expression Web class I signed up for that begins on July 6th for 6 weeks that will teach me a new software package to keep designing and innovating my website for years to come!

Learning CSS

One of the things I love to do is design, create and maintain my website. I have a basic knowledge of HTML and work in FrontPage 2003.

The new trend is to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in your code to quickly make a change in one place and have it change throughout your site instead of opening each page and making the change 100 times. :)

I am currently taking an online Intro CSS class taught by Debbie Miller at Eclectic Academy. I am having a great time! We are in week 3 and I thought it would be fun to show you my progress.

In the first week she started to show us how to write code that creates styles that you define and then place that definition in your body of code where you want it to appear.

Here is a link to Week 1 where I inserted my Artist Statement and manipulated the header to center my name in green. :)

Week 2: I created a polka dot background, changed the colors in the header and navigation bar and added my pugs. Now it is starting to look more like my style of art and color.

Week 3: We learned about external style sheets, text, border, margin and picture controls to space and place things with precision.

We still have 3 more weeks of class so I will keep you updated on my progress. Microsoft has stopped writing updates to FrontPage and has created a new web designer called Expression Web which supports CSS and many other things that FrontPage had trouble with.

I have just enrolled in the July session of Eclectic Academy to learn Expression Web. I am very excited to dive in and learn new things to take my website, http://www.pugnotes.com/
to the next level.