Big Week for Ashbee Design

It has been a busy week for Ashbee Design and all because of a project that took me about 20 minutes to complete! I think the numbers clearly indicate that we all love a simple yet classy project! I am referring to my Monogram Altered Book post.

Yup... that's the one. Seems folks liked it. A lot. I am honored to have been featured on some fairly nifty sites this week. It started with being included in a listing of 25 great projects to make this spring over on Tatertots & Jello.

Thanks Jen! Click on over and check out the other 24 ideas as well.

That was quickly followed by a feature by Gina on The Shabby Creek Cottage and Transformation Thursday. I visit there every Thursday. You should to.

That got followed by a feature on Be Different Act Normal. They are a Saturday stop with a Show and Tell Saturdays link party. Definitely worth a visit.

And then at the end of the week I ended up on a site new to me - The Smith Nest! This post was my favorite because it was about interesting things done with Reader's Digest Condensed books. They had some wonderful photos showing the range of colors available in these vintage books.

Source: The Smith Nest

And some new ideas. Check them out here. I think I'll need to be collecting more of these  designer covers. And working on new ideas for using them.

Thanks to everyone for featuring these books, and also thanks to all the people that have pinned them on Pinterest.  I have a complete board over there centered on books and pages ideas.  Check it out here.

Update on 4/30/12: It just keeps spreading.  I have also been featured here:

A Cup of Delight

And also at Tip Junkie here.

©2012 Ashbee Design, Marji Roy

Designing a Favicon for Ashbee Design

Finally I got my act together and designed a custom favicon for my blog. Did you notice?  Right up there in your url bar you'll see it. Right there in that teeny, tiny spot next to my blog's address! All 16 by 16 pixels of it.

It is a challenge to design for that size. I knew it was too tiny for clear letters and I have been searching my mind for an identifying image. I realized the answer was right there before my eyes! Ferns! I hope you saw my photographs yesterday of the ferns in my garden but additionally, I have done lots of posts about those ferns. I love watching them grow and so I started working with the fern fiddlehead image - but of course for 16 square pixels you have to simplify........

Here is where I began. Graphic and simplified......

I then cropped it to fill a square.....

 With this result.....

But then I looked at it in 16x16 size and knew it was too complicated....

I tried reversing the positive and negative space but it was still too cluttered in the tiny size.

So I simplified even more......

Made that one tiny and it had enough impact in the small scale to hold its own in that tiny corner.

Yes! I like it. I did a Google search and there are tons of sites that give the step-by-step on changing it in the blog. The only glitch I ran into was I followed the steps and nothing happened.  I refreshed, cleared my cache, tried again, gave up and decided to ask my daughter for help. Forgot about it and then a couple of days later it started appearing in my browser. So I guess they really in mean it when they say it will take awhile to appear!

My to-do list for bloggy design assignments is down one with a bunch to go.

• I need to figure out how to get rid of the blogger nav bar to report abuse. It still has the orange blogger logo.
• Design a site button.
• And figure out where everyone is getting the code for the pretty social media buttons customized to your site colors.

Springtime Ferns

I am working on a project that I hope to be finishing up tomorrow (fingers crossed).  Today I'll share with your some of the photos I took in my garden yesterday. I love watching ferns grow!

©2012 Ashbee Design, Marji Roy