A couple of weeks ago Scraps of Mind moved to its own domain at www.scrapsofmind.com

I intended this to be a totally seamless transition and in the main it was. But unfortunately there was some glitch in the RSS links.

So for all of you who have an RSS feed to my blog and get notified of updates through Bloglines or another feed aggregator please change your feed link to:

http://www.scrapsofmind.com/feed

Looking forward to seeing you again on my blog. I was starting to feel a bit unloved!!!

There is no life without humour.
It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious,
and it can make the tragic moments bearable.

Rufus Wainwright

Let me state up front that the Sewing Machine and I have never been friends. But a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I used to make embroidery and cross-stitch pictures (still have them dotted about my house). And although I don’t work with needles any more, I truly admire the work of those who do.

In a previous post I introduced you to my friend Doreen and the magical fantasy inspired dolls she creates. I mentioned that she is also a magnificent quilt maker and one day when I get hold of some photos of her quilts I’ll share those with you too. But right now I want to show you her latest adventures with the needle.

Have a look at these gorgeous book covers that she’s been playing with. Apparently she was just experimenting and “…was so pleased with the result that I made visual diary covers with them.”

Well I have to say, If I could produce stuff like this I’d be pretty pleased with the result too. The blue one is machine embroidered over velvet and organza fabrics using variegated threads. How sumptuous is it??

And the tree is made from Xpandaprint dimensional paint and painted. The leaves are tyvec and angelina fibre. The background was hand dyed too. Is there no end to this woman’s talent?

And an extra tasty item for all you fabric and sewing enthusiasts is this link to Glenda Bailey’s Needlefelted Postcards blog. This is a feast of glorious inspiration for artists and crafters alike. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Other Related posts:

The Fine Line Between Craft and Art

“What’s put a smile on your dial?” is the question asked by Kelly from Little Bits of my World.

Well given that I’m a firm believer that Humour is the best survival tool I own, I tend to have a smile on my dial whenever I’m interacting with anyone. But I do have something special to keep it there right now.

About 10 days ago I met up with a girlfriend for lunch at our favourite Italian restaurant. It always brings back the memories of our last trip together 2 years ago when we went to Provence and Northern Italy. Both of us have ‘other halves’ who are not interested in travel whilst we are mad for it. Plus we enjoy the same things so we make perfect travel buddies.

Anyway the conversation flowed around goals and future plans and direction and by the time we had reached the coffee we had decided to go to Northern Italy and Greece for four weeks in September and October!

So right now, no matter how stressful things get with work etc. (and they are a bit stressful just now), I am grinning on the inside and sporting a secret smile on the outside as I go through the day.

Life is good. Smiling makes it better.

I’ve been looking at Trackbacks and Pingbacks lately to get a better handle on what they are and how to use them. There seem to be a number of explanations around defining the difference between them, but frankly for all practical purposes I can’t see that understanding the difference means much. So this post will use both terms interchangeably (apologies to the technical purists who may be reading).

OK that said, what are trackbacks and pingbacks about? And how do you use them?

In a earlier post I talked about injecting new life into your previous posts by referencing them, where appropriate, in your current posts and providing a link for readers to easily go to the reference source if they so choose. This gives greater depth to your current post and also creates more traffic for your older posts. Obviously you need to do this in a meaningful way, and not send your readers on an irrelevant wild goose chase.

So now I’m going to talk about linking to other people’s posts.

“Why would I want to send my readers to someone else’s blog?” you may ask. Well consider this:

• If people know you are linking them into your posts they are more likely to come and read your blog.
• It’s a good way to build relationships, and that’s what blogging is all about, isn’t it? I certainly value the blogging relationships that have grown over this year since I became more aware of this.
• When you start cross-linking with other blogs it provides a richer reading experience for your readers.
• It’s a blog courtesy to provide a link when you refer to another blog in your post.

My recent Scrapbook Challenge – scrapbook layout of you was an exercise with a couple of objectives. Firstly I thought it would be fun to bring together people from a number of different scrapbooking communities to meet each other and see each other’s work. But I also wanted to see how this trackback/pingback thing worked from a practical perspective.

Here’s what I learned:

1. You need to have your trackback and pingback capability turned on in your blog set up. I didn’t get a ping (notification) when one of the challenge participants linked to my blog. When we investigated it turned out that her approval to accept and send trackbacks and pingbacks had inadvertently been unchecked. I have also noticed that a number of the folk who use Blogger have this setting turned off too. So they won’t have received a ping from me when this post got published.
2. If you blog with WordPress and I believe also with Typepad you get notified automatically when someone links to your blog in their posts. This makes the whole process so much easier but it means you have to remember that for other blogging platforms they may not get automatic notification.
3. If you are linking to someone who blogs with with Blogger or one of the private site hosted blog platforms it’s a lot trickier to ping them to notify them that you have linked to their blog in your post. It requires the poster to use a special Trackback URL in the relevant field when constructing the post (see below).
4. If you have too many links in a ping/trackback the blog security forces are likely move in and toss it in the Spam dungeon. I discovered that with my previous post, Congratulations to all who took up the challenge.
5. None of this applies to sidebar links. There are no pings/notifications for those links.

Using the Trackback URL (not required when linking to WordPress and Typepad blogs)

• If the blog is set up to accept trackbacks there will be a Trackback URL (link) usually located at the bottom of the post you are trying to link to (provided the blog owner has this facility turned on).
• You need to paste the normal post/blog location link into your text like always.
• But then you need to click on the Trackback URL of the post you’re linking to, and copy it.
• You then paste it into the special Trackback field (text box) in your own post template.
• Finally you collapse in a chair with the beverage of your choice and wait until your stress levels have normalised.

You could, of course, skip all this and just send them an email letting them know you’ve linked to them but doing it this way will leave an automatic comment on their blog referring to your own post.

So my view is:

• Cross-linking to other blogs is a good thing for both bloggers and readers.
• Trackback/pingback notification is automatic for blogs on the WordPress or Typepad platforms but requires a bit of fiddling around to notify people on other blogging platforms (or you could just use email).
• You should have your blog setting checked to accept trackbacks/pingbacks if you want to let people know you are writing about them in your posts or have them let you know they are writing about you.

What’s your opinion on all this? Or do you even care?

Other related posts:

Blogging 101
Link up your blog
Blog post titles - make them meaningful

Back on May 14th I put out a challenge to all my scrapbooking readers to post a layout about themselves on their blog by the end of the month and link back to here. The objective was to encourage some ‘book of me’ type introspection (after all you’re just as important a scrapping subject as anyone else in the family) and also to spread some extra scrapping blogger interaction.

Well I’m pleased to say that a goodly number of you took up the challenge and have posted your layouts. Thank You and Congratulations to all of you.

Below is the visiting list for the Challenge participants (and of course for any other reader too). I’m pretty sure there’ll be a few blogs on this list that each of you haven’t visited before as well as some old friends. So shine your shoes and put on your best visiting clothes and lets get out there and share some love. Make sure you drop a comment on each of the blogs to let them know you’ve popped in.

The following ladies are ‘at home’ to visitors (updated to include some newcomers — check the end of the list for blogs you may not have visited) :

Tink from Tink’s Tribulations

Kim from My Idle Chatter

Toni from A life Lived Beachside

Leslie from Orangina Dreams

Sharon from Life of Scraps

Mackey from Mackey’s Corner

Ann Marie from Creamed

Kelly from Little Bits of my World

Corina from Patchscrap

Laura from Creative Triplets Mom

Glynis from Ordinary Days

Heather from Just my Life

Janine from Angelic Ramblings not only one contribution but two! How good is that?

Sharon from My Cheeky Monkey

Hannah from Blairs Boys

Martha from Krashin’ Through

Andrea from Love Laugh and Learn

Antoinette from Sparky’s Scratches

Pat from The Life of Loonyhiker

Kayla from The Legacy Lady

Jen from Blog in a Cyber Bottle. Extra commendation s to Jen as she went to the trouble of learning PSE for this Challenge. Fantastic effort Jen.

Many thanks to Martha from Krashin Through for awarding me the Thinking Blogger Award. I am sincerely flattered because it is awarded to blogs that inspire or make you think. So it’s a huge complement to receive it as far as I am concerned.

I will be passing the award on to five blogs which inspire me in the next few posts.

Thanks again Martha.

OK Blappers…or is that Scroggers?

We’re heading up to the end of May and the culmination of the Scrapbook Challenge - scrapbook layout about you.

Hurry up and get your layouts posted and join in. Don’t forget you don’t have to make a special layout just for this challenge unless you want to. You can use any layout about yourself that you have previously done. What! You’ve never scrapped a layout about You?? Shame on you! Now’s the time to remedy that situation.

Remember the rules are simple.

• Post a layout about any aspect of you that you like on your blog by 31st May, and
• Link it back to this blog (because I’m trying to monitor the pings)
• And don’t forget, this is not a competition. There is no judging. I figure there’s plenty of other challenges out there to cater for your competitive streak, if you have one.

I’ll publish a list of links on my blog on 2nd June (by my blog calendar) to make sure that I don’t accidentally cut somebody’s May a bit short. Here in Oz we get to check out each day earlier than most of you (Kiwis excepted) and if it looks any good we pass it on to the rest of you.

When the list is published we all put on our best bib and tucker and get out there and visit each other, sharing some love on each others blogs and hopefully learning a little bit more about everyone. Catching up with some old friends and maybe making some new ones.

I’ve all ready bought a new bib for the occasion, but I’m having a bit of trouble finding a store that can sell me a tucker.

In recent weeks I have started to become interested in ATCs (Artist Trading Cards).

These are miniature artworks created on 2 ½ X 3 ½ inch card or playing cards. They are not supposed to be sold but are traded with other artists for works of their own. The original concept began in Zurich, Switzerland by a performing artist named M.Vanci Stirenmann in 1997. He created a collection of ATCs for display in his bookstore. On the last day of the display he gave one of his cards away to each person who could offer him one of their own in return. Since then thousands of people have started creating these miniature originals and trading them at trading sessions, through the mail or via Internet ATC swap groups.

I find the concept of swapping my work with other people a fun and exciting thing and because the only constraint on ATCs is the size, they are created in a multitude of different media so your collection doesn’t need to just contain pieces similar to those you make yourself. You may have spotted the word ‘collection’ in that last sentence. Those that have been reading this blog for a while will know what a sucker for collecting stuff I am. And this is too good an opportunity not to combine my love for collecting with my love for scrapbooking.

Another motivation for me is to try some experimenting with paints and stamps etc. which I never do on my layouts. To help me get out of my comfort zone a bit. Having said that, the very first ATC I created was one which was a hybrid of digi and paper scrapping (see right). Firmly and squarely in the middle of my comfort zone. I’m actually happy with how it turned out but I felt that for me it was a bit ’safe’ as digi and hybrid are what I mostly do. Whereas pulling together random non-digital elements into a cohesive layout I find far more challenging.

So I’ve begun pushing myself to do this and I find I’m really enjoying it. And I’m pleased with the results too. If you’re interested in seeing some of my creations check out my ATC Gallery on Flickr.

I’d be very interested to know if any of you already make your own ATCs. Particularly if you like mine and would like to trade. And for those who haven’t tried it have a look and see if it presses your buttons. What do you think? Are you interested?

Other related posts:

Confessions of a Collectoholic

            Photograph:

                                               a picture painted by the Sun

                                               without instruction in art.

                                                                                                  Susan Sontag