petticoat fever

{ image via flickr }

After years of thinking my skirts could use some extra volume, I *finally* ordered a crinoline petticoat last week, and it came in the mail yesterday! It makes every single dress I own look 200x better. Honestly, if you like the old fashioned silhouette of 50's dresses, with fitted tops and voluminous bottoms, you need crinoline. I got mine on amazon, pretty cheap considering how many of my dresses are going to look like they cost twice as much when I wear this slip underneath. I'm going to wear mine all the time, but it does add a ritzy factor that will make plenty of my casual dresses spiffy enough to wear on Posh Frock Friday!

By the way, if you're viewing this in a reader you can't tell, but I overhauled my layout again! After changing my header I figured I might as well change everything else as well. I made the colors of my buttons and images match the header, changed my profile photo (and added a bio-ish thing underneath) and moved my left sidebar over to the right. I really adore the new layout.. Of course, I'll probably end up changing it again in a few months, but right now I'm in love with it! ;-D

etsy resizing

Making sure your pictures look great on etsy can be tough, since the "list view" has pictures cropped to even squares and the "gallery" view has pictures cropped to wide rectangles. But if you use this photoshop action (or just follow the steps on your own) your pictures are pretty much guaranteed to look great in both shop views.

For treasuries and front page features, etsy always uses the gallery view -- so you want your photos to be cropped to look their best in this setting. I've found that if the sides of your picture are missing a little in the square view, it's hardly noticeable and doesn't take away from the image. But if your top and bottom are cropped out, it's usually VERY noticeable and detracts from the item.

So here's what you do:




1000 x 806 is the exact ratio of a gallery-sized photo, and reducing the size to 600 just makes the upload process go a little quicker. It's also a good size for uploading to your blog or facebook.

I combined these steps into a photoshop action (aka one of the best computer inventions ever!!) so that I just have to hit the play button when I open my photo and POOF! it's magically resized!

If you'd like to download the action, just right click on the file and save it to your computer:

etsyresize.atn

web design!

Since my number one favorite way to spend my time (besides watching movies, playing with my cats and drinking grapefruit juice) is fiddling around with my blog designs, I decided to use that enthusiasm in a more constructive way, and open up an etsy shop for web design! I might add more things in the future, but for now I'm offering my services (that sounds so cool, by the way!) for blog design, blog headers, etsy banners, tumblr design and blogger overhaul! It's all at slightlyterrific.etsy.com (Scathingly Brilliant is taken. BUMMER!) So exciting! :-D