Valentine's Day Rebranding (via BRAND NEW)

Today over at BRAND NEW (a fabulous site that shows before and afters, as well as sharing of opinions of corporate re-branding efforts) there is a great post about Valentines Day. If you live in one of the countries that celebrates this holiday with all the pink, red, chocolates, and roses… You’ve seen some tasteful Valentines “things” but moreso MANY untasteful, ugly, and tacky Valentines things.

A few of the writers of BRAND NEW took on the challenge of Redesigning Valentine’s day. They tackled the Heart as an icon, the color pallette, as well as Cupid.

Below are the new “Cupids”…

Love Puppy by Jessica Hische (via BRAND NEW)

Chief Valentine Officer by Amanda Woodward (via BRAND NEW)

Heart Worm by Von Glitschka (via BRAND NEW)

What do you think about their effort? Like it or hate it, cast your vote here!

My momma is an amazing woman. She is fun, smart, thoughtful, and so very creative. A month ago she started a little blog to document/share her stamping and crafting projects. It has been such a great fit for her, and so much fun for me to watch her grow in her “new found” digital creativity in the blogging world!

When I was a child, momma hosted kids crafting workshops at our house. She instilled and fostered the “Making” gene in me. I am so thankful for her sharing her gifts, had it not been her love and encouragement growing up who knows if I would have become a designer!

Happy Mother’s Day Momma! I love You!

Blurb Website

Blog vs. Book. Tagable vs. Tangible, Dynamic vs. Analog.

It isn’t as hard or as impossible as it may seem…Blurb (an online publisher), allows you to slurp (upload/import) content from your blog and then translate it into a multi page book. The online publisher provides free software called BookSmart (crossplatform mac/pc) as well as several tutorial videos to help in the designing/publishing/printing of your book! AND if that weren’t enough Blurb provides a “Share, Promote, Sell” service where you can make your book available for other people to purchase.

BookSmart Application

SOMETHING TO TAKE NOTE OF:
One thing to take note of is that BookSmart only can slurp blog feeds/entries from Blogger, Live Journal, Typepad, and WordPress.com blogs. This means if you have a WordPress Platform Blog (like we do here at Gamil) that is not hosted at WordPress.com, you cannot slurp your blog content into BookSmart for the layout/publishing. BooHoo. SO BLURB… Is an update to BookSmart Coming for all us other Wordpress Users?

POSSIBLE WORK-AROUND FOR WP USERS?:
I haven’t tried this so I don’t know if it will work…but I assume If you have a WP platform blog, it may be possible to export your .xml file then import it into one of the supported Blog Platforms?

Blurb Bookstore

That all said, I am definitely impressed with Blurb. Not only do they have the Blog to Book publishing, BookSmart also has Various (70+) page layout templates for Portfolios, Photobooks, Wedding Books, Guestbooks, Cookbooks, Yearbooks, Journals, Text & photos, Text only, and Poetry Books. Making it easy for any novice to jump in and create a book.

If using a Template isn’t for you and you want a book designer to design your book? Well Blurb has a created a directory of designers (BlurbNation) to help you create your entire book from cover-to-cover, write and proofread copy, design pages and organize your content, scan, edit, and restore photos, artwork, and more,
provide creative services you haven’t even thought of yet. WOW.

all photos from Blurb.com