I think I mentioned this once before, but for the last few weeks, I’ve been contributing posts on blog design to BlogHer’s How to Blog Better series. Since some of these posts might be helpful to our clients and readers, I thought I’d toot my horn a little and link them up!

• How to Change Your Banner for Wordpress.com
• How to Change Your Banner for Blogger.com
• The Non-Designers Guide to a Blog Design Theme
• How to Create a Simple Banner Using Photoshop (Video Tutorial)

In the coming weeks, I’m going to cover how to create a seamless background pattern, some “do’s and don’ts” in blog design, Twitter background design, best practices for ad placement in design… and, hopefully, more!  Is there anything you’d like to know how to do or know more about? I’m open to your ideas! Let me know in the comments here or on Twitter.

Speaking of BlogHer... are you going to BlogHer ‘10 in NYC this August?  We are!  Kathy and I both will be there and we’d love to meet you. So look for us [in the lounge] or let us know you’ll be there so we can look for you.  It’s my first trip to New York, so I’m really looking forward to it. Hope to see you!

It’s not a secret that Joelle’s creative talents flow abundantly from the portfolio, but apparently it’s being noticed in more places than one.  The writers at Six Revisions did a piece recently called 30 Creative Illustrative Website Headers in which they highlighted the use of illustration in a website design for their Design Showcase/Inspiration Topic this week..  They showcased 30 amazing sites using illustration as a focal point and Joelle’s work popped up THREE times in the list.  Her web stylings from Fashion Junkie, Brandi Bakes and Cheestique - three gorgeous websites done by our very own, the lovely and talented Joelle were featured on their list.

It’s nice to see her talents getting recognized!  Check out the whole article on Six Revisions. Woohoo!

We've always thought of ourselves as fashionable – *wink* – and we know we've made an impact in the world of blog design, but we never expected our style to show up on television!

One day I was watching some show on TV when a commercial for Best Buy comes on about three generations of women who need laptops: a daughter, a mom and a grandmother. So they show the daughter's clip about how she needs one for school and they show the grandma's clip, who was new to computers. Imagine my surprise when they show the mom's clip... and it looks just like our client, MommyCast!

The exact shade of pink pink, the same yellow, the same white daisies — which are a popular Photoshop shape, but still! Considering our client, MommyCast, is such a popular site for moms, I don't think it's a coincidence that the "mom" set in the commercial looked like that.

So kudos to MommyCast... and kudos to us! It's nice to see our work recognized, even in a roundabout way!

We were remiss this year in offering up some of our holiday wallpapers.  If your desktop has that not-so-festive feeling, try one of these on for size!

Shameless plug: Have you picked up your copy of The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie yet this holiday season?  It makes a great gift!  Hint hint. HINT HINT.

Happy Holidays!

Of course, none of our clients would ever want this…

Ok ladies… no pushing, no shoving, no line cutting and no hair pulling.  Femmeplates™ are finally available for purchase!  We know, we promised these on August 11th but an unfortunate run in with some stubborn code set us back some.  Not to mention, I was out of town while Joelle hammered away at the set-up so that didn’t help move things along any faster.  How helpful of me!  However now, we have it all pulled together and working smoother than Kenny G covered in cream cheese.  Now, don’t go throwing darts at us if you run into anything hinky on checkout.  We’ll get any kinks ironed out I’m sure.

Femmeplates™ came from our desire to do some less restrictive creative work without the usual rules and regulations set forth with bigger projects.  We love designing pretty much anything but sometimes it’s fun just to do whatever hits our artsy fartsy button.  So we’ve unleashed a handful of premium cute stylish templates to choose from with a variety of price and license options to fit your needs.  We’ll be adding more new designs as the year goes on so the stash will get larger but for our premier Femmeplates™, we though this grouping would strike some of your girly chords. 

So go ahead and head over to our new Femmeplates™ selection and browse around. Viva la Femmeplates™!

This made me laugh so hard… because I would totally go to a Font Conference.

Thanks for the link, Kymberlie!

With the amount of requests we’ve received this week, it’s like someone let the Web Design Party Bus off at The Moxie Girls™ Lounge.  You guys are absolutely drunk with ideas for your websites and we are overwhelmed with exciting projects. Thank you for thinking of us!  If you’ve sent an estimate in the last couple weeks, make yourself at home, pour yourself a cocktail and we’ll be with you momentarily.

While we’re working our little fingers like mad to create incredible designs for our current couture design clients, we’ve also been busily creating designs for our labor of love, Femmeplates™.  We decided earlier this year that while we love creating designs for our clients, we also wanted to cut loose and design pretty things just because. We have to design for passion, not paycheck sometimes. It helps us keep things fresh for every client and not get in a rut, which can be easy to do if you’re not mindful.

Now, that’s not to say Femmeplates will be free. Let’s not get crazy!  These will be stylish, mostly female-centric, moderately-priced premium designs for Wordpress, Blogger or straight up HTML/CSS markup.  Femmeplates are not regurgitated freebie layouts with different banners, these are not templates created by others and modified by us, these are luxury designs lovingly created by us in our spare time so you can give your blog The Moxie Girls touch without waiting in the queue until you’re collecting social security.

There will be a few tiers of pricing, depending on the level of exclusivity you choose. We also must consider the licensing for the images used in the design, so that all parties involved get their copyright needs met. We respect stock illustrators (and all artists), their desire to protect their creations and we hope you do, too.

As these are designs of passion, so to speak, it means the looks you’ll find could be anything that strikes our fancy.  It could be seasonal, it could be bridal, it could be mommy-oriented, hobby-oriented, professional or whatever blows our dress up at the time.  We won’t be taking specific requests for Femmeplates — that would require a Request for Proposal for a custom project.  But, we are open to hearing your ideas, so if there’s a type of design you’d like to see in the Femmeplates showcase, drop us a line.  It doesn’t mean we will do it immediately, if at all, so don’t get bent if you don’t see it for a while. It’s nothing personal!  It simply means we’ll tuck it into our hat for the future.

The initial offering on August 11th will be select.  It’s a soft launch for testing the waters, so first come, first served.  No hair-pulling and no biting.  We don’t have that kind of insurance.

Have a great weekend!

Wait… that’s not how that goes…

Look, tequila gets artsy fartsy!  I was just reading on Cocktail Times how 1800 Silver is teaming up with nine artists throughout the United States and Mexico to create a fashion line of tequila bottles. How cool!

I usually prefer vodka, but I’ve been learning to appreciate tequila lately… and not in that “Oh my god, what happened last night?” kind of way.  I tend to dig higher quality tequilas and preferably clear or “silver” tequilas.  I’m also more of a sipper than a shooter. My body shot days are long since over… thank god.    I’ve never had 1800 Silver, but I might give it a go for one of these bottles!

Margaritas are such a perfect summer drink, so here’s a recipe for a super-cute and very delicious-sounding version, courtesy of Cocktail Times. That needs to be tried asap!

Pink Margarita

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz reposado tequila
• 3/4 oz Monin wildberry syrup
• 3 oz sweet & sour

Garnish: pink salted rim, lime wheel and lime twist

Mix tequila, syrup and sweet & sour in a cocktail shaker. Strain into a salt rimmed margarita glass (or short glass) over ice. Garnish with lime wheel and a twist.

Happy Friday!

Potato and Onion © Dan Worthing. All rights reserved.

This strip, Potato and Onion, was introduced to me by a friend and I love it now.