These are the people I have decided to tag to be in the spot light go to Christy’s Coffee Break to get the rules. Sorry this got in a two part post but I had to find folks on MyBlogLog community I thought would participate in this.

Annisa

Deborah

Jon Holato

Dorid

Beyond Technology

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Yup this is more of what I had in mind I knew I had this somewhere. When I think of espresso I think of a hyper active cat with bugged out eyes demanding more. When I think of a caffeine rush I think of the same hyperactive cat (My Dot) at the peak of hyperactivity bouncing from place to place.

I got nothing for cheap and cheerful sorry guys.

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I found this over at the Graphic Design Blog

I thought it looked interesting and here is my take on it. I don’t scribble anything my scribbling looks like kindergarten stick figures. So I put together a couple of banners with my paint shop program and my animation shop program.

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Ev over at My Life Is Murphy’s Law tagged me on this meme so now you get to know a little bit more about Wildheart. The rules can be found at Christy’s Coffee Break. You can choose from whatever questions you wish but I liked the questions Ev picked so I went with them. And I am still going to have to write another post to tag folks cause I have just built up my blog community and need to go through some of my blog friends to see who I think would seriously participate in this.

Are you a spiritual person?

I am a Christian, but I do not believe that God is the sole force in my life. I believe that He helps those who helps themselves and that you are ultimately the one in charge of your destiny.

Do your moral values affect the way that you blog and if yes, how?

Very much so. I am not going to trash anyone on my blogs I will give constructive criticism and help build someone up. I am not a drama queen and I don’t go around the internet causing drama. I don’t want drama on my blogs either. I am one who believes in treating others as I would want them to treat me. I also believe that you teach people how to treat you. If you show your a professional immediately you will get treated like one. If you show your a foul mouthed punk then you will get no respect.

What are your feelings on the blog popularity issue?

I don’t blog for popularity. I blog because it melds my two talents writing and designing. If it happens I get notariety then great if not then so be it. I am on here because I love to be on the internet. It has helped me find my way out of the darkness of my life.

What is the weirdest thing that ever happened to you?

I have had way too many weird things in my life happen, it would take a month of Sunday’s to go through them all.

What is your best quality?

My ability to survive. I have a fierce tenacious spirit. I decided I was going to take control my future and not let others control it. I could go on Survivor and not miss a beat having to live on the bare minimum. I may not win the game but I would sure the hell work my ass off and try.

What is your worst quality?

Unfortunately my best quality is also my worst quality. I am very stubborn, hard headed and set in my ways. It is the way of the Capricorn. Yes I also believe in astrology too it helps me find explanation’s to my personality.

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Ok this is the first time in my design career such that it is that I am going to write a tutorial of sorts for Cafepress so please bear with me and if I leave anything out I apologize but I will try and cover as much as I can and well as much as I know from my experience.

First in order to really get the best idea of how a design will look on their products it is critical that you have good photo editing software. I personally recommend Paint Shop Pro as it will let you copy and past your design onto a template to see if it is going to fit nicely on the merchandise you choose to display in your store. You can get a free trial here

You will need to set up an account with Corel in order to download the free trial, however it is free to sign up with them and there is no obligation to buy anything to get the trial.

Now once you have the trial downloaded and ready to go then you need to go on Cafepress and download their templates. This is an example of what they look like I will display a couple here.

You will notice there is a dotted line and and a solid line if you want a slight white border then your image should only fit to the dotted line. Images with white backgrounds work best for cafe press merchandise that is white as you can see from visiting my shop. Colored merchandise should ideally have a very similar in color background in the design. Say if you want design and merchandise cohesiveness it is best to sick with a black background for black merchandise otherwise you will have a very tacky looking square around your image.

The reason having photo shop or paint shop pro as you can see by the red box you have to have someway to delete the template. If you open the template in your photo editing software you can copy and paste and cut quickly.

This design looks good on the button above because when it opens in my paint shop program the background is white. So is the template background and there is no edge bleed to worry about. Another thing you need to think about is the image size. As is defined in the next template.

The green arrows on this journal template tell you what image size will look best on the journal cover. Which is 1100 x 1500 pixels or there abouts. If you want a slight border than you can center the image just to the dotted lines.

One thing also to mention is to make sure your images reflect your business adequately. If you run an IT business then a day care related design e.g, would not be appropriate. Need I say it tags are important too. One thing that Cafepress tells you to consider is using a drill down method to determine your image keywords. Like diet,weight loss,humor, t shirts. Cafepress will also give you a calculation as to how often your keywords are used in search by visitors to Cafepress. If you type in Dogs e.g, it will tell you that this term has been searched 1256 times today.

The only draw back is that Cafepress doesn’t offer a very big list of categories to categorize your shop so you really have to make this determination accurately as possible.

For basic members you can only choose one item of merchandise to showcase one design on so it is critical to make sure you choose your design and your merchandise carefully. This is where you also have to make sure your products reflect as close to your business as possible. A weight loss shop wouldn’t sell a beer stein unless they wanted to show a beer stein could be used for a smoothie stein.LOL.

Also you get to have a banner for your shop logo you can see how clean my banner looks. My banners image size is 492 pixels wide by 58 pixels high. For basic members this is all you get a banner and a line or two of text. One day I will have money to have a premium shop then I am sure the possibilities are way more extensive.

Pricing is one thing I have not been a pro at I use the 20% rule for determining how much to mark up my merchandise. I take the base price*.20 + that total to the base price to get my mark up. The lesser priced merchandise won’t give you much of a markup using this method but the moderately priced stuff will and you don’t want to go above a $15 mark up or their is a transaction fee. One reason I choose to keep my mark up modest so I don’t get what profit I may make penalized.

You should also buy your own merchandise too to make sure the quality is going to be what your customers expect it to be. I have done this and am glad I have because I can tell you that their merchandise is top notch. I have ordered my magnet and I love it.

This pretty much wraps up what all I know about Cafepress and the design element aspect of it. I can always do a video conference with anyone wanting to see how to do the image and template items in paint shop pro. I will be honest and tell you that writing directions and tutorials is something entirely new for me and I am a show you how to instead of tell you how to kind of person.

If you have any questions or comments about Cafepress or designing in general I would be happy to help you in any way I can.

Have a good one.

wildheart4vr aka Joe Cheray

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I have been going through my main weight loss site and my business blog today and cleaning house. I decided that less is more and so I went back to the bare minimum on my main site for now. Plus I revamped my layout on my business blog and I really like the new look. Also if you scroll to the bottom of my blog here you will notice one of my own custom creations bearing my screen nic. I was really proud of that one when I finished it and I like the way the design looks inset against the main color of the footer.

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Ok this one was a hard challenge I still had fun with it I don’t think I totally got the idea right but well art is subjective right.

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Ok so tell me what you think does it even remotely match my banner?
I made my banner with photoshop cs2 when I had the trial version so I didn’t have the same design elements to work with. So I really struggled with trying to get the same color scheme and lettering. I couldn’t duplicate the blades of grass or the hearts in the banner as those brushes were exclusive to photoshop so I had to use paint shop pro tubes instead for the hearts.

Really need my new found designer friends opinions on this. Thanks.

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The Realm designs are currently being used on a site over on runboard.com called The World of Realm.

The Turtle Pack one is also being used on runboard but has gone dead in the water as the person who it was originally set up for has not done anything with it.

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