Blog Design Update

I was feeling in a bit of a creative mood yesterday, and decided to give the blog a bit of a facelift before I get super busy with school.

I made a new header using some fun heart clip art from Vanagon Champion, as well as Pic Monkey, which has an awesome new collage feature that made making this kind of header easy as pie!

It was as easy as:
1) Going to collage mode
2) uploading some photos
3) picking a layout (I used Ducks in a Row)
4) Dragging the photos over
5) Adjusting the spacing of the photos and sizing of the header
6) Saving! (Note: I love the quality sizes names on Pic Monkey-- Mel, Ewan and Russel, although for me, Ewan would always be the best quality :P )

The only thing that was a bit of a pain was having to open the file again in regular Pic Monkey to add the text, but other than that, it was a pretty painless experience.

I also switched things up a bit in terms of the font, text, layout, widgets, removed some pages and most awesomely of all, re-cropped my photo to a round one (again, thanks Pic Monkey- the rounded corners frame on full radius and some transparent corners made my photo even better) and made my social media buttons a bit more fancy using these free buttons from The Latest Find. 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how my blog makeover went, but I'd love to hear what you think! 

♥ Craftzilla 

Blog Positivity Week and World Social Worker's Day

The administrator of my social work program sent this on to all the students to wish us a happy World Social Worker's Day, which is followed by the United Nations Social Work Day on March 26th. This day is being used to mark the release of the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development: Committments to Action, that outline the areas that the social work community is going to focus on for the next four years. The Global Agenda document is pretty interesting, and prioritizes these goals from 2012-2016:

- Promoting social and economic equalities
- Promoting the dignity and worth of peoples
- Working toward environmental sustainability
- Strengthening recognition of the importance of human relationships

So what does this have to do with Blog Positivity Week you ask?

Relationships - When I think about these four goals, I couldn't help but thinking of blogging, and the ways that it is in line with promoting these goals in my own life.  I feel that blogging for me is a large way that I make connections with people, and strengthen and build true and lasting human relationships in my life that are positive and have the scope for change, equality and movement towards reaching my own goals.

Business - Now, a lot of the bloggers that I connect with are other women, many of whom are running their own crafty businesses, who are trying to get ahead in their businesses, and make a living for themselves that is not necessarily dependent on having an office job where they work regular hours. Part of blogging and being a part of this community is supporting others in their business ventures, and helping to carve out a niche for economic stability in these kinds of businesses.

Sustainability- Sustainable business, reusing old materials, thrifting and connecting across borders without travelling? Bloggers, we definitely have sustainability and crating a better world for ourselves and sharing how we're doing so with others around us in mind.

Dignity and Worth - Overall, blogging for me has been a way to find my own dignity and worth again after going through a lot of tough times that really left me questioning the why of everything and wondering how I was going to find the strength to keep living through the grind of day to day life. I haven't even been blogging seriously for a year yet, and already it has allowed me to share my craftiness, my photography and my unique perspective on the world.

I'm closer today than I was to finding a true sense of myself and what I need to do to be happy, and I can't thank all of you enough for coming along for the ride and reading my blog, leaving a comment, or being open enough to share your secrets and fears and happiness on your own blogs.

So thank you so much for living, loving, sharing with me, and coming along for my journey as well!

♥ Craftzilla 

For more blog positivity posts, head on over to After Nine to Five's blog.

Guest Posts, Crafty Reveals and Blog Positivity Week

Just popping in here to share a few exciting things that are going on!

Guest Post Today on Living Apockylypse- Sweet Potato Sushi DIY

Today I'm guest posting as a part of Kelly from Living Apockylypse's Blog party in celebration of her one year blogging anniversary! Check out my Sushi DIY as well as some other awesome DIYs, giveaways and amazing posts today on her blog!

Exciting Crafty Announcement 

Also of exciting note, is the fun and fabulous announcement that Kelly also made as a part of her blog party- her, myself and Margot from Newfoundlander at Heart have banded together and come up with a new crafty community project, called the ApoCALypse (CAL for Craft-a-long) where we connect crafters in working on crafty projects together. Our first set of projects will be knitting related, but there will be other projects of a crafty nature in the future. For more information on how to get involved, check out the ApoCALypse blog , Flickr Group or join the ApoCALypse group on Ravelry.

Blog Positivity Week on After Nine to Five's Blog 

And last but not least, Ashley from After Nine to Five is spending next week (March 19 to 25th) on her blog having a Blog Positivity Week to celebrate the positive aspects of the blogging community and for all of us to celebrate all the good parts that blogging brings to our lives. If you want to get involved, check out the information page here to sign up and get involved!

I hope all of you are having an awesome St Patrick's Day!

29 Leaps: Comment Love

I thought for something fun to do for the 29 Leaps project (see my post about it here) that I'd share the comment love to 29 of my fellow bloggers. I'm usually more of a reader of blogs than a commenter, unless I really force myself, although I know how inspiring it is for me to get comments on my posts. So I've made some comments on all of these blogs in the few weeks (this took longer than I thought it would for sure)  to help share the love! If you're inspired to do the same, please let me know in the comments!

Tea Pots and Chatter

Searching for Serendipity 

To Make Love Stay 

The Simple Boxcar

A Blog about the Little Things

Too Crewel

Living Apockylypse


The Student Knitter

Lord knows I love to Dance

Newfoundlander at Heart

Skates and Stitches

Of Woods and Words

Dainty Daisies 

Whimsical Poppysmic

Bookhou at Home

Scientific Culture

Make Something

365 Lucky Days

April Boyd Counselling

Bossy Femme

Triing to Be Athletic

Sangui(knit)ie

Hey Zombot

Rouge and Whimsy

Revolutionize Her

Mama Marchand's Nest

Polkadot Pretties

Dot in the City

Earl Leigh Designs

I won't lie, it was a bit difficult commenting on 29 different blogs, and I even took the last few weeks to do it. But I know I appreciate the comment love, and I hope others did as well:) I'll also be sharing my adventures from our mini vacation this week, so stay tuned!

♥ Craftzilla 

Blog Design Updated

In case you hadn't noticed, I made a few changes to the design of the blog, and I'm much happier with how everything looks! (If you're in a reader, you can check out the whole thing here)

I will likely do something fancier with the header at some point, but I wanted something simple for now until I have time to do that. I also spiffed up the side links, changed the font of the posts, headings and page links, and put up a new profile photo that I think is pretty darn fancy.

I even learnt a few new skills, of how to change the fonts in html and other fancy things like that. Overall, I'm feeling pretty darn accomplished!

Future plans:

• Go through labels--there's a lot of extraneous ones
• New Blog buttons
• Redo pretty much all the pages
• Add images to go to specific sets of posts, i.e. features or DIYs.
• Perhaps change up how sponsor ads are displayed
• Changes to Sponsor page --likely an embedded form

Phew! That's a lot of work just thinking about it! Since this is still a work in progress, please let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions for me. I'd appreciate it! 

♥ Craftzilla 

Blog Action Day- Poverty and the Importance of Food

I'm participating in Blog Action Day this year, a day where bloggers get together to talk about a specific topic. This year, the topic is food, as today is also World Food Day. 

Since I've been in this Social Work program, I've had to think a lot of poverty and food and the impacts of this on every day life and how people deal with the lack of money to buy good food, and it's an issue that keeps coming up in discussions of poverty and community action that needs to take place. I even wrote a paper last year for a community development course that used a community development model to highlight areas where poverty persisted in my community and how to resolve them. In my reasoning, the issue of food banks and access to good food is one that keeps coming to the top of my mind, as food bank usage continues to rise, even though the economy is apparently pulling out of it's slump.

There are a few local organizations that we discussed in a class whose focus is on food and the need to increase the amount of money that people on social assistance are given to go towards necessities such as food. Challenges such as the "Food Budget Challenge" and Do the Math Challenges which challenges participants to live on $20 a week, the average amount that many people on social assistance have to spend on food. Personally, I don't even know how this is possible and think that the suggestion of immediately increasing the amount of money that people on social assistance get for food by $100 may provide some temporary relief for those on social assistance, but the solution to the problem entirely is not forthcoming. More and more people, people who have jobs even, and by token of our economic system should thus be earning enough to feed themselves are using food banks, are falling on hard times and poverty due to the fluctuations and whim of the economy, and a solution does not really present itself readily that works within this current system that we live in that actually leads to radical change. This site also highlights the difficulty of choices when you have limited resources, and how easily you can lose everything based on making the "wrong' choice of paying bills or buying food or medicine. It's actually  bit like a realistic online game of the Game of Life.  


I guess I also have a few of the tenets of the Occupy Wall Street movement on my mind, especially since the movement's protests here in Guelph are just up the street from my apartment (I can hear the drums of some of the protesters even). A handful of Occupy Guelph protesters are out camping in tents in the downtown square, to protest the way that profit and the bottom line currently prevails over the needs and realities of real people. 





Their chosen slogan "Life over Profit" is pretty much in line with my thoughts on how food and the real life needs of people has ceased to be the bottom line for governments, especially when it comes to making needed changes to social programs and making them quickly and comprehensively enough so that people are helped when they need help. 


At any rate, I think we need to think a bit more about what's important, and how to make sure that everyone gets the necessities that they need, especially the greatest necessity of all, food. 


♥ Craftzilla 

http://blogactionday.org

Guest Post on Elousions : Favourite Thrifted Finds

Head on over to Miss Lou's blog to check out my post from yesterday on my favourite thrifted finds of all time!



Also, I've made a few appearances on the blogs of my lovely sponsors lately--on Embrace the Apockylypse and Elousions blog !

Clearly I haven't been making many appearances on my blog of late, but will change that later on today with an awesome post for Blog Action Day, whose topic this year is Food!

Thoughts on Blogging and Time of Late

I've been trying to think of some ways to improve my blog, in terms of the content, and also making it pretty and more interesting.

The Eternal struggle for time: 

Let's face it, I always have time management issues, and being in university right now does not help that, nor does it stop me from constantly taking on more than I can chew at times.  I'm hoping to try to figure out my time a bit better to be able to sit down and write more posts at a time, rather than rushing each day to try to write them on my off time. I'm hoping Ashley's amazing new time management ebook Stopping the Clock- Turn Wasted Time into Productive Time (which I won in a recent giveaway) will help to give me a few answers on this! It's chock full of great tips and advice that I'll be trying to use in my day to day life, as well as some fun and useful templates for to do lists, goal lists and time trackers.

My sewing and crafting has of course also been lacking of late, which really is making me a bit depressed. I actually mashed my knitting into my giant backpack of school today, and knitting a bit while reading stuff on the computer on breaks and on the bus made me feel a bit more normal today, which is always good. Clearly I need more portable crafts, without having to resort to getting one of these babies:

I may have totally bought one of the 80's versions of these at a garage sale, but I can guarantee you that it was just not as good as the real thing!

Seriously though, any other time management strategies /magic spells or timeturners you'd like to share, I'd be all ears!


While I think of it--Some quick bloggy updates I have done

Updated my  list of my appearances on the internet  - guest posts, giveaways and posts I've been featured in. There will be more to come of course, but it's fun to have them all in one place I think!

I made some updates to my About Me page in the last few weeks, what do you think? Any questions you would like answered?

♥ Craftzilla

What's Inside my Purse - Messy and Clean Edition

I've seen a few of the what's inside my purse posts, and while I'd like to believe that everyone's purse is super spic and span like in all the photos, I'm guessing that this is a more an excuse to clean out the purse and THEN take pretty pictures of what's inside.

So, I'll show my purse before I clean it out [DISCLAIMER--THIS IS NOT PRETTY] and after, once it is all cleaned out and spandy-nice:)

Here's my purse:

Here is the pile of stuff that came out of my purse. Apparently I use my purse a bit like a filing drawer/junk drawer of random stuff:

Here are some close ups of all the random stuff in my purse --this is a bit like a page from a Where's Waldo book, no?

kleenexes/wrappers, business cards, apple, recipts, pile o' paper, change purse, leather craft cording, cell phone etc.

craft cording, business cards, elastics, heap of paper/bills, toothbrush & toothpaste, glasses, buttons, bus tickets, friendship bracelet/floss, ipod, pens, change

ipod, sunglasses, 2 notebooks, sewing project, wallet, allergy pills, band-aid, pen/marker, keys, charging cables, heap o' change

And after removing all the unnecessary things --here's what's left to go back into the purse:

Looks much cleaner now, right?


♥ Craftzilla

Things I'm excited about today!

1. The start of Ashley's Blog 101 course! I'm excited to learn her tips on blogging, meet some fun people and get even more out of this little blog :) Registration is open until 7pm CST tonight if you want to join in the fun!

2. Lovely Sponsors! A more in depth sponsor post will follow later on in the month when I'm less busy, but super excited to be button swapping for August with such a lovely group of ladies!

3. Winning a copy of the Design 101 ebook from the Campfire Chic givewaway and Alexandra Rae! Can't wait to get my hands on this baby and learn some fancy new things!

4. Just registered for 30 Days of Lists for September too! This is also gonna be super fun, and I think I will be making a fancy little scrapbook for it sometime this week!

This is my favourite of the ones that Campfire Kam made--aren't they sweet? Check out the rest here

5. Picnics today for the Civic Holiday--fried chicken, potato salad and other tasty treats are being prepared now! Yum! Pictures to come later!

For anyone who doesn't know, the Civic Holiday in Canada is the first Monday in August, and is for cities to celebrate their own local heroes. For Guelph where I live, this means lots of celebrating for John Galt, who founded the city of Guelph in 1827, and was a novelist who was called the "first political novelist in the English language." For more about him check out here

Off to make more things for the picnic! Have a wonderful day everyone!

♥ Craftzilla

Sponsorship Love

Since I'm just really starting out with the blogging and the Etsy shop, I was looking around this month for some bloggers who were offering free sponsorships on their sites. I happened to run into three of these, so just wanted to share a little love for those who are sponsoring my blog this month!

Polly from Pixie Mama -- I  love this crafty lady's style and her amazing outfit posts and unique style!

source

  Loving her latest DIY project, a Boho wall hanging! I must make me one of these!

source

I love her use of doilies in her crafts, especially this doily necklace from her Etsy Shop!

source

Drew from Kitsch Cafe has also been kind enough to sponsor the blog for the month of July!

Kitsch Cafe is a blog about vintage style and design that showcases some of the fancy vintage wares from the KitschCafe shop, great photos, and interviews and features with other lovers of vintage-y things.

I adore these kitchy animals from his shop--they're verty similar to the owl statue and puppy coinbank I picked up awhile ago, no? That green puppy dog is certainly begging to come home with me!

source

The Etsy store is also chock full of fabulous housewares --here are some of my favourites:

source

source

source

Violet from The Quiet Life of Violet is a brand new momma and self-described 'lover of lists, the little things in live and all things crafty'

source

Her and her husband have just welcomed their new baby, Roman a few weeks back--look how adorable:

source

source

Check out her blog to follow her adventures as a new momma, as well as read great weekly features like 1300 Things to be thankful for posts by guest bloggers, her thoughts on crafty things and all things quiet and lovely!

Thanks lovelies, for helping me to get my blog and Etsy shop off the ground! It is most appreciated:)

♥ Craftzilla

Blog Talks and Finding a Voice

source

I went to a fun video blog talk [I'm there in the lower left corner! ] last night hosted by My Girl Thursday with some other lady bloggers--it was fun but odd to video chat with people who are strangers in the strictest sense, although some of them I knew a bit about from reading their blogs. (It's also been awhile since I've video chatted--I only ever talked to the boy really on Skype when we still lived in different cities)  There were definitely some interesting questions that were posed though, and it was definitely nice to connect with some other bloggers to hear their thoughts on what worked best for them.

The question I asked, which seems sort of a line I'm walking lately is the question of how much to share on a blog about your personal life when your blog is largely supposed to be representative of your business, as well as using your own self to basically sell your brand as well as to connect with readers. The advice given was basically to write as if you were writing to a friend (which of course you are) and to keep a handle on how much you share, but over-share if needed, and where it feels relevant. This was basically what my thoughts were on the whole thing as well, and I guess I just need a bit more time to put it into practice.

All in all a helpful chat, given thoughts that have been going through my mind of late regarding blog challenges and keeping motivated,  as well as trying to find my niche of what weekly features work for others, and which will work for me in my blog in the long run.

Other Blog related things I'm excited about

Upcoming Toronto Blogger meetups, organized through My Life as a Cupcake! They've got a Facebook group up and running, and I'm looking forward to the meet up happening! I think meeting up in person with some other bloggers will be a great experience, and hopefully a little less awkward than the video chatting:)

I'm also excited that I won a spot through a Twitter giveaway in Ashley from After Nine to Five's upcoming e-course, Blog 101! I think I definitely fall into the "who should take this course" category:

Who should take this course:

• Someone who understands how to blog, but wants to grow it by putting forth effort
• Someone who wants to make better use of their time blogging, commenting, etc.
• Someone who wants to make their blog work for them and their style/personality
• Someone who wants to understand how to show off their personality through their blog
• Someone who doesn’t only focus on the numbers aspect of blogging
• Someone that likes being in a class with a lot of like-minded people

I'm glad that there's a 6 month window for this course though, since I'm struggling a lot with getting schoolwork done in the heat of the summer. However, I think this is just largely because I'd rather be doing things that are closer to my heart, like blogging or going out for walks with the dog and friends rather than sitting around staring at the computer, and I'm not incredibly gripped by the course I'm taking currently either. Even bribing myself with future rewards of a hangout at a friend's place with beer drinking and swimming (in some safe order) hasn't done the trick to get me motivated yet. I know I always figure it all out in the end, but I really need to work on my procrastinating ways and learn how to self-motivate a bit better. Clearly I will need to think on this a bit more in a future post: :)

♥ Craftzilla

New Blog Button!

I just spent a bit of time learning how to make a blog button, and just wanted to share my results! You can see them on my sidebar, or grab one from here



<br><a href="http://craftzillaconquerstheworld.blogspot.com" title="Craftzilla Conquers the World"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6058/5891003742_2547fed401_m.jpg" width="155" height="155" alt="Craftzilla_blogbutton _155x155" /></a>


I used this tutorial from a site called Oikology . I love the definition of oikology (from their blog):

oikology: (oy-koll'-uh-jee) n. the study, or science of homemaking. From the greek oikos, "house, dwelling." 

Now that some of my little jobs are done, I'm off to possibly celebrate Canada Day with some goat/bunny/lamb petting (you're never too old for petting zoos, right?), cuddle the puppy, since he's been staring at me wanting to go out as I write this, and generally try to relax and enjoy the holiday a bit! Hopefully I'll also get to see some fireworks, since I've been dying for some lately. That's what I get for growing up in Peterborough, where there's fireworks two times a week, free concerts and an illuminated boat show. It's a lot for other places to live up to!


♥ Craftzilla

Blog Weekly Features - Searching for the Perfect Fit - Part 1

I've been thinking a lot lately about weekly blog features and which ones I should try to integrate into my blogging experience. There are so many out there, and while there are obvious ones that are not a good fit for my blog or where I am in life, there are still a ton of choices out there. Here's an overview of some of the weekly features I enjoy from other people's blogs, as I try to find a few features that I can keep up with and that fit with my writing style.

First off, I've been doing one of my own features, somewhat not religiously, which is a Sunday post called "Things I made and saw" which basically allows me some free rein to show some photos of adventures, as well as things I've crafted or cooked over the past week.  You can see the links here , here and here. I find this is working fairly well for me, since it allows me to sum up the week, do a fairly open post with some sort of structure, on a day when I have more free time than most nights during the week after work.

I tried doing a Photo Friday sort of thing a few times (here and here ) but I felt a bit limited to only show one photos, and lacking a theme of some sort, I felt a little lost, since you don't always have an awesome, hilarious photo like the one from the first post (this one) to share.

I've also done a few Etsy Treasury posts (here and here)  which I also think work well, as long as I have a theme and only do them once in awhile....not sure if I really have time to do one of those more than once a month or every two weeks or so.

General posts of tutorials around some sort of theme also seem to be informative and interesting, and I know I like these ones on other people's blogs, since I love tutorials and different ideas for doing things. And things  like Pinterest are super helpful at keeping track of these sort of things (when I have time to play around with them, of course!)

I'd also like to do a few more tutorials of my own (I've done a couple ) but I find the steps a bit time consuming (plus it's hard to get pictures of things you're sewing--need to work on this )  However I definitely have a few more projects, tips and techniques to share, so likely there will be a few more tutorial posts to come, with the possibility of some video tutorials (if I get up the nerve)

Anyways, so making progress, and I'll think a little further about what works best for me, as well as put together a bunch of options that other bloggers are doing for weekly features (that will be Part 2) and I'll see what works best for me :)


♥ Craftzilla