New52 | Week 11

I said I wouldn’t do back-to-back techie things, so I feel slightly bad about this – except that it’s not really techie and more “work related” (but on the technical side) and it was on my ACTUAL “New Things I Need to Do” list that I made at the beginning of the year. Because I had to figure it out, and I had been avoiding it for months. (Sort of like learning to drive a stick, which I still haven’t done!)

I think a lot of people just check in with me here at my blog, but I also had a small, unexciting splash page up at my company domain onelittlebirddesigns.com that I used as my “company website” address. It wasn’t very impressive – just my logo with links that sent people to other places. I only created it so that when people asked me where they could find me on the web I had a real official sounding URL to give them rather than “Oh, I’m at Frick On A Stick dot com!” Trying to be one of those fancy businesswomen and all.

Like I said, creating an actual site for One Little Bird has been on my list of things to do for a while but I was never quite sure how I wanted to bridge the gap between the two sites – so it was a lot easier to just leave it how it was, even though it slowly ate away at me. Also I know that every time I’ve sat down to redesign my blog it winds up consuming a lot of my time and creating a lot of frustration. So I also had “just hire someone?” written next to this item on my To Do list.

I had toyed with the idea of moving my entire blog over to that site and just sunsetting Frick On A Stick (did you just gasp? Because that’s what I usually did whenever I sat down to give that serious thought). But Frick on a Stick is memorable, and it’s what most people are used to from me. Also I don’t know that I could just TOTALLY immerse myself into the sterile “onelittlebirddesigns.com” URL without feeling like a bit of me just died.

So I finally spent a large portion of last week coming up with a vague idea of what I really wanted to deliver with my sites. And I decided not to hire someone – because let’s face it, I’m way too big of a control freak. Then on Friday I buckled down and made some tough decisions on the actual design – which is a lot of commitment, and ends up being very nerve-wracking for me. But even after I nailed that down I still had to figure out how I was going to make it work with both sites.

I stayed up until 4am for three days straight, jumped out of bed after a brisk 4-5 hours of sleep and got back to work. Because once I decide I want something to be new – I can’t eat, sleep or concentrate on anything else.

And now the One Little Bird Designs website is live and running. (And so is Frick on a Stick, so don’t worry, you don’t have to change anything!)

You can find all sorts of permanent information about my company, designs, tutorials, photos and philosophies over at One Little Bird Designs. And you can still find my ever-changing, ever-rambling, ever-so-“why-am-i-reading-this?” content over here on Frick on a Stick. Honestly you won’t even notice that you’re switching between the two sites unless you look at your address bar.

The BEST part is that I managed to get it all done in time to meet my New52 deadline. Because that was my aim, and I was kicking myself for waiting until Friday to actually get to work!

If you keep up with me through my RSS Feed in a reader (like Google Reader) then you probably won’t even notice that anything changed – and nothing really has for you. But when you do decide to venture to my actual website, I think you’ll find it to be a more well-organized and inspiring experience.

About This Project

New52 is a project started by Christine and I that invites participants to live outside the box a little bit more and try things outside their comfort zone. Sometimes the “new” will present itself to you unwittingly, other times you’ll be seeking it out. My hope is that we can all become inspired by one another’s adventures – perhaps gain the courage to try someone else’s new thing ourselves.

Don’t worry if you’re getting a late start or if you miss a week here and there. New52 isn’t about making a life-altering change every week, it’s about keeping an open mind and embracing little changes in your life. I try to post my New52 entry every Sunday after reflecting on the past week. If you participate this week, please leave a link to your blog post, scrapbook page, photograph or other recorded history of your walk on the wild side in the link list below. You can also post images to our Flickr Group! We would love to see what you were inspired to do.

Dive into Blend Modes with Fei Fei’s Stuff

It’s already a well established fact that I am a TOTAL NERD for technical things and tutorials. I cannot pass up a good tutorial. Unfortunately there are a lot of “Yea so, who didn’t know that?” tutorials out there so I don’t find myself worked into a froth as often as I’d like.

I happened to catch this tutorial that Shaui of Fei Fei’s Stuff posted on her blog yesterday – and if you’re new to Photoshop or if Layer Blend Modes just have never really clicked for you, then you need to check her tutorial out. It had me foaming at the mouth – I was that frothy.

I’ve been wanting to put together a concise explanation of the various blend modes in Photoshop for a while now because there are so many digital elements – in my kits and in others – that you can make look COMPLETELY different just by messing around with blend modes. And Shaui breaks it all down so well. So even if you think you know all there is to know, go check it out.

(image via Shaui’s Blog)

Go now. Seriously. Do it.

Are you still here? Go! (But come back, because I’ll miss you!)

Storewide Sale + New Flight Plans!

First of all, Oscraps is kicking off its 5th Birthday Celebration tomorrow, with challenges, chats, giveaways and other festivities running through next Sunday, March 20th. Oscraps really knows how to party, so make sure you stop in for the festivities. My sale starts today and runs all week. Check your newsletters, my Facebook Fan Page or my Twitter feed for your extra savings code.

I added three new Flight Plans to my store today:

I’ve also made the Time Capsule “Birdwatcher Bits” available to the public in my store, too. (They were previously a free product download for Cage Liner subscribers.)

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The Weekend | Mar. 5-6

I’m in the process of turning some of these Year of Weekends pages into Flight Plans (layered templates) and I have three of them ready to go for Thursday (including this one). Which is NOT the top secret project I was working on this past weekend. Because I just told you. And that would make me the worst secret-keeper EVER.

JOURNALING | i think one of the most unfortunate side effects of working on “secret projects” is that i don’t really get the chance to explain to people why i’m missing in action – and I spent this entire weekend doing just that: working on secret projects that won’t come to fruition for several more weeks. Practically glued to my chair, with empty coffee cups – for fuel! – strewn about my desk, trying to organize all of my scatterbrained notes and ideas into neat little (coherent) packages. Then in the final hours, deciding to go a totally different direction anyway.

MATERIALS | Flight Plan No. 8 (available 3/10) and Time Capsule by One Little Bird

About This Project: A Year of Weekends is an ongoing album project that embodies my desire to stay grounded in the everyday unsung moments that make up the weekends of my life while also giving me a playground to express myself through design and storytelling – without any pressure to be poignant or a trendsetter. My goal is to always design these pages around products I already own or designed myself, which allows me to revisit some of my favorite kits and products and either use items for the first time or see previously used products in a whole new light. Sometimes the pages will be irreverent, other times they’ll be serious or emotional, but all of them are created in celebration of the extraordinarily ordinary moments that fill the 48 hours of each weekend.

Feel free to join in and post links to your own pages in the comments. Don’t worry about what products you use, all stories are welcome.

Final Curtain Call

Sounds sort of sad, doesn’t it? :: big frowny face :: Our Oscraps Designer Spotlight has officially wrapped!

But it’s not sad – it was a whole month of documenting quotes, conversations and Q&A sessions for everyone that you love the most! And hopefully the dialogue bug has sunk it’s teeth into you and you’ll continue to include these little gems in your memory keeping on a regular basis. I still jot little quotes down almost daily.

The final winners have been chosen (randomly) and posted in our Designer Spotlight Thread and all of the prize codes have been sent out via the private messaging system in the Oscraps Forum. If you didn’t receive yours please contact me with links to your submissions and I’ll troubleshoot for you.

But there was one winner that wasn’t chosen randomly, and that was our Master of Dialogue winner. Liz and I spent a lot of time scouring the Designer Spotlight Gallery and making a list of the pages that really caught our eye. Then we entered into tense negotiations, sequestered for days so as not to be influenced by outside sources, subsisting only on Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and our mutual desire to see this thing through to the bitter end. And in the end, we agreed on one name:

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