The latest Animated Advertisements I made ...

        

Some more FREE animated GIFs

a long, long time ago I put up some animated ads as PIF's in my tigergirlsupplies store on etsy. (They're for advertising your site/shop through Project Wonderful, blogs etc.) Well, I've just done another couple for Tiffany Teske - her images are just gorgeous. To get the animated effect you'll need to look down the right hand column (animations don't show in posts).

I might just put a few more PIF's up in my etsy supplies store.

Oh, I've opened a supplies store on Dawanda too now, same name - tigergirlSupplies, just a different link. I'll eventually be filling it up with rubber stamps - I have far too many left over from that little biz I used to have.

You can see a few more here. (That is going to be my new site when I get around to finishing the tweaking and getting some of my silversmithing up there)

More free shop / site promotion at Qassia

Ok, so I've joined Qassia.

Seems to be a mix of technorati , blogcatalog, mybloglog etc. with a bit of blogging and squidoo in there. At the moment it's in beta, so you can only join with a referral from a current member.

The whole idea seems to be that you 'register' all of your web sites with them, then create and author content - this in turn gets you qassia dollars and links back to your sites on the web. So, register your etsy shop, your dawanda shop, your blog etc.

I read somewhere that these qassia dollars will eventually (when they go live, I presume) allow you to buy front page advertising. Anyhoo, I figure free promotion, is free promotion right? It only took a couple of minutes to sign up and be verified and I took one of my blogposts on antiqing brass to use as content, so all in all, just a few minutes work.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes but it can hardly do any harm.

If you're interested in signing up or finding out more (haven't read through all of it yet)->
sign up: http://allloujames.qassia.com
find out more: http://www.qassia.com

Oh, and a big thank you to those that let me know that the blog posts are indeed showing up.

Testing - why are the posts not showing??

Yikes, is this one going to show?

Blog comments

Q. how to send a message and if I do who reads it....................

A. I'm not too sure what you mean by 'message', I'm assuming it's comments.

Anyway, you'll probably want to know about comments too (these are the messages people can leave about your posts).

Setting up comments - all posts:

• I think by default, all posts have comments enabled however .....
  
• Sign in and view your blog. Choose Customize>Settings>Comments
  
• Now you can see all your comments options.
  
• I have chosen to show comments, let anyone make comments and all new posts have comments (ie. can be commented on)
  
• I have my comments show in a popup window (just my personal preference, I don't like losing the pages I am on, I prefer new windows)
  
• You might want to moderate comments - I do (when someone leaves a comment you'll get an email notification, you can view the comment and choose whether to publish it or reject it - stops any nasty comments someone might leave) - if you choose this option, be sure to enter an email address they can notify you at.
  
• After you've made your changes be sure to click 'Save Settings' at the bottom of the page.
  Setting up comments - specific posts:
  
• When you are editing/creating a post there is a link "Post Options" under the big content box in the bottom left, click it.
  
• Here you can enable/disable comments for this post only (sometimes you might notice that a particular post might not have comments enabled for some unknown reason - this is where you fix it).
  
• This is also where you can change the date/time of a post so that posts appear in a different order on the page (they are ordered by date/time) - this comes in handy if you've previously written a post and saved it as a draft but didn't publish it, later when you publish it you can change the date/time so that it appears up the top as the most recent post.

Moderating comments:

• You can either follow the link in the notification email you get OR
  
• Sign in and view your blog, choose New Post > Moderate Comments - this will list all of the unmoderated comments (if any) and you can either choose to publish or reject individual comments

Leaving comments:

• To leave a comment on your own blog (ie to answer someone's question) or another person's blog is the same (some blogs may differ slightly if they're not blogger blogs)
  
• If comments are enabled, at the bottom of the post you will see something like this > Posted by tigergirl at 8:10 AM 0 comments

** I notice now that when I leave comments on other people's blogs I can elect to be notified by email if there are successive comments - this is a feature I haven't explored yet.

How to get a three column blog ....

Well, as you can see, I've got more widgets on this blog than I can poke a stick at, so many that I had to make my blog a 3-column blog to fit them all in. Of course, then I had to figure out how to switch to a 3-column layout without starting all over again. For anyone that needs the same information (in my search, it seemed that I came across a lot of questions asking about this but not many answers), use this article at Random Bytes.

Who sees my blog?

Q. Do others just see it or does one have to post a message for others to look in at it

A. Well, anyone can see it (although, I think I saw options to block certain users or only allow certain people to see it), but like anything on the web, it's a matter of finding it. The only way people will find it is if they do a search on something which happens to be mentioned in your blog, they're coming from one of the various blog networking schemes (myBlogLog, technorati, blogcatalog etc.) or you've posted the addy somewhere (eg. on one of the many blog threads in etsy).

Basically, each post will just be added to the page (if you look at mine, you'll see numerous posts - most have different dates, but some don't have dates because I did the post on the same day as another post) - until it reaches the maximum (this is set by default but you can change it), then the older posts are still acessible but are not displayed on the front page.

How to change the number of posts visible on the front page.

• Sign in and view your blog
  
• Click "Customize" in the top right hand corner - this will take you to a new page
  
• Click the "Settings" tab up the top,
  
• Click the "Formatting" link (3rd from the left) under the tabs
  
• At the top of the page is "Show" with two boxes beside it. In the second box you can choose whether you want a certain number of posts shown on the main page or whether you want it to be shown by days (for people that only post once a day - this would end up being the same), the first box you enter the number of posts or days. Mine is currently set at 7 days worth.

How do you access the old posts?

• You can either access them through the Posting>Edit Posts list page OR
  
• You can scroll to the last post on your main page, there's a link there "Older Posts" OR
  
• You can use the "Blog Archive" element on your main page (if you've added it to your template) - you can see mine in the righthand column of my blog.

How do you add a Blog Archive?
This is much like adding the etsy mini but easier

• Go into Customize>Template>Page Elements
  
• Click the "Add a Page Element" box in the side column
  
• Choose "Blog Archive"
  
• Move it to where you want it in the column, save everything

Editing your blog posts .................

OK, sometimes after you've posted, you realise that things aren't they way you wanted them (happens to me all the time), so you need to edit your post.

There are two ways (after you've signed in and are viewing your blog):

1.

• At the bottom of each post there is a little tiny pencil pic (next to "Posted by ..... Comments..."), click it,
  this will open the Posting>Edit Posts page with the post showing in the box.
  
• Make your changes
  click the "PUBLISH POST" button in the bottom left and whallah! Your post has been edited.

2.

• Click the "New Post" link in the top right of your blog. Now you'll be on the Posting>Create page
  
• Click the "Edit Posts" link (next to the "Create" title). This will open up a page with a list of all the posts you've made.
  
• Beside each post there is a checkbox and two links ("Edit" & "View"), check the checkbox for the post you'd like to edit
  
• Click the "Edit" link for the post you want to edit
  
• Now you're on the Posting>Edit Posts page but the post you want to edit is showing, make your changes
  
• click the "PUBLISH POST" button in the bottom left.

Creating new posts for your blog and adding pics ......

Q. Maybe do a how to make some things.. if that is the sort of things people do other than chat and read.

A. This is exactly the type of stuff people like to read (features of other etsy sellers are also very popular).
In order to do this just create a new post -

• after you've signed in to your blog and you're viewing it, you'll see "New Post" link up in the top right hand corner, click it
  
• now you're on the new create posting page, fill in the title (something like "How to make a ...." or "Tutorial:........")
  
• fill in the big box with the instructions - there are two tabs at the top "Compose" and "Edit HTML". You'll probably want to stick with "Compose", it pretty much shows you what will show on the page. For a more accurate view you can choose the "Preview" link in the top right of the box (NB. when you use this, the custom colours you've chosen won't show, don't worry, they will on the blog) - to get back to "Compose" you'll need to click the "Hide Preview" link (top right - it replaced the "Preview" link when you clicked it).
  
• using the toolbar along the top of the box you can change the font/colour of your text, format the text, add lists, add links etc.
  
• to add pictures click the little pic of mountains and sky under the "Edit HTML" link. Another smaller window will open, you've got the option of uploading a pic from your computer or using one that's already on the web somewhere. Choose how you want the picture to show (to the left, right or centred, small, med, large) and then click "UPLOAD IMAGE" the page will change and finally you'll see a "DONE" button, click it.
  
  In my experience, pics are always added to the top of the page (even though you often don't want them there). You can click on a pic and drag it to where you want it in the post or you can edit the HTML and move the code for the pic. There is a 1024Mb limit of pics, so if you stick to fairly small ones, there shouldn't be a problem for a long while.
  
• after you fill in the box with all the info, add some tags (I usually forget this part), these are just the key words from the post (kind of like tags in etsy for items)
  now you can click "PUBLISH POST" (bottom left)
  
• there will probably be a "View Blog" link at the top of the page now - you can go see your blog with the new post.

Now listing on EBAY!!!

Well, the unmounted rubber stamps weren't doing so well in my etsy supplies store, so I decided to put them on ebay - much better response so far.

So, if you were planning on getting any from my etsy supplies store, get in quick before they're all removed!

I've got a butterfly thing going on....

yes, there they are, some new additions. I think there'll be a couple of changes happening before they go on sale but this is the beginning.

Butterfly necklaces - antique gold finish chain, czech glass beads, brass charms and assorted other bits and pieces.

Lots of felt and fabric jewelry on it's way too .........