Lovin' Bloglovin

Bloglovin.com - are you guys familiar with this wonderful website?

This is one of the best things I have discovered in a long time. Bloglovin is a wonderful tool - it saves me time, increases my productivity and efficiency - I just love it. Can't say it enough!

What is Bloglovin, you ask?

It is a totally 100% free website, which I would totally pay for, by the way, which is saying a LOT these days.

You register on Bloglovin - which involves entering your e-mail and picking a password, and get ready to simplify your life.

Bloglovin keeps track of the blogs you want to follow. You copy and paste the URL of any blog you desire into Bloglovin's search field, and Bloglovin pops up a little button that says "Follow", you click the button, and then once a day you get ONE e-mail from Bloglovin with a list of any new posts from the blogs you've chosen to follow.

Bloglovin supports all blog platforms - Blogger, Wordpress, and even free-standing sites.

This is what my daily e-mail from Bloglovin looked like yesterday morning:

 Of all the blogs I follow, 3 had posted new content in the previous 24 hours.

The daily Bloglovin feed contains 2 clickable links for each new post - shown by the 2 arrows above.

The large arrowhead points to the direct permalink to the new post. This is provided through Bloglovin directly, which is an important distinction I will come back to.

The feathered arrow points to a hyperlink to the blog itself - no bypassing through Bloglovin. This is important to all you Pinterest pinners out there - if you want to pin something from one of these posts, you need to use this link, because you cannot Pin through a Bloglovin link. Does that make sense? Bloglovin prefers you to click through their link, so they put it first, and made it bigger. But I have gotten into the habit of clicking on the smaller text underneath, so I can pin if I "need" to.

Now I don't have to trudge through the list of blogs I follow on Google, trying to find updates. They are delivered to my e-mail daily! And I don't have to get mad because I accidentally closed the wrong window while I was reading blogs, and lost my place on that Google list! When I think about how much time I've wasted trying to track my way back to where I left off reading!

Can you blog hoppers imagine how handy Bloglovin would be when participating in a blog swap? Just feed all the participants' URLs into Bloglovin, and on the day of the swap, only those blogs that have updated will show up in your feed! No more clicking on blogs, just to find out they haven't updated their blog in 6 weeks - or more! Frustration over! Just don't enter all those URLs way in advance of the swap date UNLESS you really want to follow them, or your daily Bloglovin feed will get longer and longer!

/End of unsolicited, unpaid endorsement of Bloglovin. Check it out! You won't be sorry!

Edited to add important info for Pinners: If you DO click on the second link, to go directly to the blog, so that you can pin images, remember to first click on the title of the blog post! That way, you will be sure to add the permalink for the image, so that when other folks click on your pin, they go to the correct blog post!

Blog Giveaway!

I've been blogging for a few years, and have recently rededicated myself to being a better, more consistent blogger.

As of today, I have 62 wonderful followers, and I treasure them, and would love to have more. To that end, I will be doing a giveaway here once I reach 100 followers.

This is what I will be giving away to thank my readers and followers:

These earrings were designed with Vintaj Natural Brass findings, Swarovski crystals, and vintage Swarovskis.

To follow my blog, look to the right sidebar, and scroll down to the button that says "Join this Site," and follow the prompts. It's easy!

You can also help this giveaway happen even sooner by Tweeting or Facebooking about this giveaway, and by telling your friends. Get the word out!

Details about entering the giveaway will be posted here when I reach 100 followers! And I promise even more giveaways in the future!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I am going to try to post something here everyday (I know, you are on the edge of your seat!)


Maybe just a simple picture, or a book recommendation, or the story behind one of my designs; no promises, but I am going to try.

Blogger is a user-unfriendly platform, especially if the user is on an iPad (where Blogger will not allow spell-checking, or the embedding of pics), so I have been lax about blogging. And much like my jewelry photo-taking, the more I put it off, the more it piles up, and so when I would finally sit down to blog, the shear volume of information I wanted to share was overwhelming. Few people want to read all that stuff, and I didn't want to plod through the posting, so I trying a new approach. Snippets here and there.

Hope you have a wonderful 2012!

[A photo-less post from my iPad]

Fellow Etsy Seller Features me on her Blog

I was notified this morning by Adult Indulgences, an Etsy seller of custom spice blends, that she was featuring some of my designs on her blog, Etsy Sellers You Must See.

Take the time to check out her blog  - she has featured some very talented sellers there! And visit her shop, too!

Is it just me?

Or should I say, "私がそう思っているだけでしょうか。/気のせいかな。"

Bailey and I have been blogging for a few years, and starting about six months ago, we both started getting comments in Japanese on both of our blogs. While neither of us can read Japanese, the comments always seemed to be different, from our admittedly non-professional analysis of the characters. The commenters' names were composed of 2 0r 3 of these characters, and the comments were usually 2-3 lines long, and ended in a really long ellipse, like this "......................................................."

And to be fair, the language may not be Japanese at all; it may be Korean, or Vietnamese, or another similar Asian language.

But I have run a bunch of them through the translator at dictionary.com, using every possible source language I could find on that site, and none of them translate to English.

It started with 1 or 2 comments per month on each blog. Now I am getting 1 or 2 a day, and Bailey gets 3-4 each week. And starting today, some of mine have dispensed with the foreign characters in the commenter's name, and now use our alphabet (albeit in nonsensical combinations).

I am just rejecting all these comments, and writing them off as spam. I am afraid that the ellipses might actually be a link to some sort of spammy page or virus, so I am just not letting them through. But I am really interested in hearing from you guys - is anyone else getting these, or are Bailey and I suddenly the toast of Asia?

And on a side note, I have actually had a lot of time for jewelry design and creation lately, and have finished some neat stuff, and have a lot of other partially finished projects (as usual). I am just horrible about taking the photos, uploading them, editing them, and posting them to my blog. I will try to do better.

I don't know what Bailey's excuse is. He does sleep a lot.

If anyone else is getting these weird comments, please tell me about it! Thanks!

EDITED TO ADD: Bailey & I are both still getting these comments, and I have been able to determine definitely that there is embedded HTML in the ellipses. Something strange is definitely going on....

EDITED YET AGAIN, TO ADD: Oh, goodie. They contain embedded links to PORN.
I will try to cut and paste the non-porny part here - the sender of today's comment is:
瑜吟, but unfortunately the entire comment (besides being in Japanese, apparently) is just a clickable link, and I can't highlight it to copy and paste here. But merely hovering over the comment showed some really interesting-sounding sites. I'll just be sure and check those out. And so will my dog.

Good grief.

So What Type of Blog IS this, you've probably been wondering....

I found this fun little site, which purports to analyze one's blog, and provide a mini-psychoanalysis of the author.

So, I jumped in with both feet - having little else to do except put out inventory at the store....


The site, which I believe is Swedish, translated back to English, is quick to disclaim:



Note: writing style on a blog may have little or nothing to do with a person´s self-perceived personality.



The Typealyzer indicates that I am of the type:


ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves. The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

Please recall the disclaimer above - I'd like to re-write it as:
Note: writing style on a blog may have little or nothing to do with a person´s self-perceived personality or actual, in fact, personality.

'Cause man, that analysis is way, way off. As 5 out of the last 5 people I started arguments with will attest. Including the oh-so-helpful customer service manager at my local Cable company, just this morning. Yeah, Lou - I'm talking about you.

The site further gives a little analysis of the brain parts the author uses while writing the blog:

Analysis

This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.

Interesting, but I don't really know what to think about all this, except -

Whatever.

Can't wait for Bailey to give it a whirl!

Whee! Look at me!

My friend, the lovely Nancy of NanjoDogz has featured Bailey and me in her blog.

I met Nancy through the Dogs and Art group on Flickr. It's a really fun group for folks that love dogs.

I hope you'll take a look at our interview!

I finished a beautiful bracelet last night, but have no way to photograph it yet - still no word on the fate of my camera.

I also took another Silver Art Clay class on Saturday - this one was on Silver Paste. We painted actual leaves with the silver paste, and fired them, in hopes of ending up with a pendant. This didn't work out so well for me. I chose a ginkgo leaf, and for some reason the paste just would not adhere to the leaf. About halfway through the class, the teacher suggested I do a back up leaf just in case the gingko didn't work out, so I also did a small geranium leaf.

We actually managed to glob enough silver paste onto my second gingko leaf (had to scrap the first after the leaf rejected the paste and then tore in half), and it fired OK. It looked kind of plain when everything was finally done, so we added a faceted garnet to the pendant, and I refired it yesterday. I had to leave it cooling in the kiln overnight at the shop, and won't see it until tomorrow.

Then there was that backup geranium leaf. It decided to break during firing.

Then the Dremel we were to use to drill bail holes wasn't working, so I don't so much have a gingko leaf pendant, but more of a paperweight, right now.

And since I don't have my camera, you will just have to imagine what all of this looks like!

I am pretty much over the Art Clay Silver. I gave it a good try, but it just isn't my thing.