So I got the all-clear that my eyes are healed, yay! For those who are a little late to this party, I recently suffered corneal abrasions on both my eyes that covered the majority of my corneas. They were chemically etched. Yikes is right! After 4 days completely blind, then another week of just ok vision I now have my vision back and eyes are healed. That is a lot to celebrate!

I’m passing on my excitement with a big blog sale! Its my opinion that business web sites can benefit immensely from blogs being incorporated. Any web site for that matter! To celebrate being back to designing and to also help raise funds to cover the cost of expenses related to my eye injury I’m having this sale.

When you purchase a web site design package and add a matching blog design to your order I will take %50 off that matching blog! I’ll design a theme to match the web design you ordered and install it to the associated WordPress blog on your new site! You’ll have a fresh new blog to chronicle all your excited about your fresh new web site.

How do you take advantage of this sale? Simply add your design package using the package picker (Get Started @ top) and check the “Add a Matching WP Blog Theme” option. After you add that to your cart you can use the coupon code: BLOGTASTIC at checkout to get your discount.

eCommerce site owners start here | Informational site owners start here

That’s it, its that easy! So check out the design packages and get your BLOGTASTIC savings on your matching WordPress blog theme.

I’m updating my web site, its been a long time coming! In this update I’m doing away with the old portfolio and going with a more updated way to manage it. All items will be featured on the blog area of my site rather than a hard to update portfolio page.

Here are some older banner designs that mostly date back pre-2008 that I wanted to keep in my online digital portfolio.

Not see what you are looking for? These are a small sample of the many many logos and designs I’ve done, ask for more examples if you have something specific in mind!

I’m updating my web site, its been a long time coming! In this update I’m doing away with the old portfolio and going with a more updated way to manage it. All items will be featured on the blog area of my site rather than a hard to update portfolio page.

Here are some older logo designs that date back pre-2008 that I wanted to keep in my online digital portfolio.

Not see what you are looking for? These are a small sample of the many many logos and designs I’ve done, ask for more examples if you have something specific in mind!

I’m updating my web site, its been a long time coming! In this update I’m doing away with the old portfolio and going with a more updated way to manage it. All items will be featured on the blog area of my site rather than a hard to update portfolio page.

Here are some older designs that date back pre-2008 that I wanted to keep in my online digital portfolio.
Not see what you are looking for? These are a small sample of the many many logos and designs I’ve done, ask for more examples if you have something specific in mind!

I am officially back from vacation and spending this lovely Monday catching up on all my work. Ever feel like you need a vacation from your vacation? Fortunately when we arrived home we found that the weather in Minnesota was far nicer than that in Nevada, go figure. Yes, we were there for the SNOW IN LAS VEGAS!

My husband and I spent the week in Las Vegas, neither of us had been there before. Wowee, there is a lot to see! If you like to sight see its a great place to visit. We both loved the visual aspects of Vegas, the lights, the architecture, just everything. My husband has just picked up photography and was constantly stopping for pictures and learning how to use his Cannon SLR. I, on the other hand, stick to my point and shoot camera which I find does amazingly well for such a tiny camera. Aren’t those umbrellas neat?

We did find it funny how work and simply life follow us on vacation though. When taking pictures I was constantly looking at composition and layout in the way I would for web or graphic designing. When going back over our pictures you can tell which one of us (between my husband and I) had studied more in terms of layout. His excuse? “Oh honey, you can crop that for me”. Haha. I can tell you that on more than one occasion my husband stopped and said “Kristine, why are you taking a picture of THAT?” Can you tell by the look on his face in the above picture? That has got to be one of my favorites.

I love to grab images that I see around me to stick away for future inspiration. I find myself commenting on colors or the pattern or simply the layout of things around me. When you work in design its easy to fall into a pattern of doing the same stuff over and over, therefor I make a effort to watch for new things around me in my every day life. I think this is important for creative woman and is true for a lot of my clients. When was the last time you noticed a billboard’s unique use of color or how the reflection of a fountain dances on the water. I dare you to find one new thing that is inspiring to you the next time you are out running errands, or something that just looks neat. You just might be surprised at what you find!

I had tried tablets before, even Wacom tablets. Having a digital drawing tablets were a requirement when I went to college for web design. Unfortunately I had never felt the tablet love before now. Previous tablets I tried felt awkward, were not accurate and had few options to really make me want to use them. Sensitivity had been lacking and static cling on the drawing surface made the last one wig out on me. I knew there were good tablets, but I didn’t want to spend $2000 on one! I wrote tablets off and learned to perfect my craft via mouse.

That is, until I saw the Intuos4 at the store. I sat there staring at it, pondering whether it would really be worth the $350 price tag. A sales lady approached me and we had a nice long chat about the features and previous issues I’ve had with tablets. I was sold. I then turned to the lady and said “Hey, that man over there in cameras is my husband. He’s looking for a new SLR. Do what you do best and get him excited about his camera purchase, then he’ll happily agree to buying me this cool new tablet.” Yes, wives are evil sometimes. Hey, it worked and us girls have got to work together. He did get a chuckle out of the scheming.

So I get the tablet home and giddily rip it out of the box. First, I have to comment on the size. I purchased the medium one and the drawing space is perfect! I was afraid that it would be too small to get a good feel for it or to feel natural, but its definitely adequate. By the way, the Wacom Intuos4 comes in several sizes ranging from small to extra large, so there is a size (and price) for everyone. Next I notice the pen holder, when you open it up it has 11 extra tips for the pen. I haven’t had a chance to play with those but I presume they give a different feel when drawing. The tablet itself has programmable hot keys that you can set in accordance with your drawing program. I use Photoshop and Pixelmator and found that these come in handy. Not only are there buttons but also a LED display right next to them to tell you what they do! You can also set your hot key buttons based on program, so if you use specific shortcuts in one program and not another it will recognize that.

Actual use of the tablet is awesome! It feels like you are writing on paper, just the right amount of feedback and grip along with a smooth (static-free) surface. The sensitivity is nice as well and allows you to press harder for a thicker line as if you were really painting or drawing. I have to say, that after only 2 months of use I really am enjoying this tablet and it has made my drawing time significantly shorter.

All in all, this is a quality tablet and if, like me, you were afraid to try them again (or for the first time) I think this would be a good no-regrets digital tablet.

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