Do That Homework!
and also turn it in–that’s what I tell my students, the people I tutor, my kids–other people’s kids–and I take my own advice. Don’t just be a wild child–do your homework first! I do it, and I turn it in on time. My husband is very amused by the fact that I often manage to sell my homework too; not by peddling blackmarket term papers (read a book and write your own!) but by selling things I make in my ceramics class. Or by taking an Adobe InDesign class and self-publishing the Spirit Doll Body Instructions and Pattern or the miniature polymer clay vanity set how-to I did as homework up using graphics created (you guessed it!) as homework in myAdobe Illustrator class. (The pattern and instructions will also be in the upcoming book Making Faces , Molds and Forms.) The fashion doll sized set of perfume bottles on a polymer clay tray you see here is made using the instructions now available from PolyMarket Press. Wouldn’t every Barbie lover want to make a set for their tiny boudoir? I’m going to make another set myself, since I’ve sold this one!
But today’s homework involves work from my Open Source Coding class, in which we are currently studying building blogs (like…this one!) using WordPress.org. This PolyMarket Press blog is my effort, and my fellow students created blogs too. Its great to see what everyone chooses to talk about and how each has presented it using wordpress themes and modifications using css, html and php codes.
Emily’s blog not only has a beautiful banner at her These Blue Eyes blog, she also has some funny stories, like the one about the couple who brought their two parrots with them while doing some complex banking transactions. I’ve seen the kitchen of friends with parrots, and their cupboards were largely pecked away…good thing the birds at the bank only stayed a few messy hours!
Glo wrote an articulate post about some of the drawbacks of seeking web design as a full time position. She also gave a very concise review of basic html and css in class that was most helpful. Her blog, titled Tangerine Glo, utilizes colors that do just that!
Classmate Richard introduced us to the user-friendly and potential very useful Headway templates, and has some very valid concerns about the monetary issues our world is facing. If he’s right about a 1% transaction tax coming up, there will be a lot of unhappy people seeing their paychecks nibbled away–a percent to deposit, a percent each time you spend…those little nibbles add up! AS an entrepreneur, this is an issue important to me. I certainly don’t want to lose a percentage on my homework OR my sales! Time for more barters and trades, where creative people don’t need to involve banks.
Montana blogged about the impact of the fires–she lives in Boulder and the fires came way too close! It puts the importance of homework in perspective when you are dealing with fires that burn down neighborhoods and displace people.
Autumn Leaves
Time is passing quickly–I’m gearing up for the Houston International Quilt Festival that is coming right up at the beginning of November. In addition to books, I’ll be there with Judith Skinner and Houston’s own polymer clay artisan mask-maker Rebecca Stout. She’s got quite a few masks featured in the upcoming book A Collection Of Polymer Clay Masks, and here’s one of them!
Now that we are past the Autumnal Equinox, we’re starting to feel a nip in the air at the night and the leaves are beginning to show a little color–though not yet as much as you see here! Rebecca’s mask at right is big enough to wear to any Fall Festivals, and the one shown below by Judy Jaussaud can be worn as jewelry–it’s less than three inches large!
So Many Choices!
In any artistic endeavor, there are times that you have lots of choices, and times that the project pretty much propels itself in directions that you might not have thought about previously. When things go well, it is a mixture of both the planned and the serendipitous discoveries. The parts that work well are accumulated, and those that don’t get reworked and changed out.
That’s true when laying out books, when building websites–many issues to think about with placement, layout, color schemes and more.
WordPress.com sites have a number of theme templates that users can choose from to build free websites that are hosted for them, or you can host your own site with more options with WordPress.org. There are lots of themes to choose from there too. Themes supply CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) templates that make a blog or website look the way it does. Lots of designers have supplied some ver spiffy layouts and setups, with fonts and things chosen for you. Then you can modify some of them with your own banners, or change colors, but most are limited as to what you can change. One of my favorites is the Atahualpa theme. I like it best of many that I have tried because I get to choose everything–backgrounds, sizes of columns and how many, colors and borders–everything! Aunt Acid, our Spokes Model, approves heartily of individuals having all the choices and all the responsibilities, which is the motto here at PolyMarket Press too!
I’ve used the Atahualpa theme here at the PolyMarket Press, at Aunt Acid’s own website, for artist Gaynor Cooke Nelson, and at The Creative Living Center.
Some other sites that I’ve built use different themes, like The Office Wiz who uses the Coraline theme, Mad Margie’s Fused Glass that uses the MistyLook theme, and LandS Glory Artisan Jewelry with the Tarski theme. If you find a theme that goes well with what you want already built, that is great–but if not–Atahualpa is the theme I choose, so as to have all the choices–decide on how every aspect is displayed!