www.reflectingthedesigner.com

I just recently designed a blog theme and helped to set up a working Word Press blog for Hajii Otto, a stress coach and speaker from Hawaii. It was fun to play around with a relaxing, tropical theme, and I so enjoyed working with Hajii. Of course, how could you not have fun designing a blog theme titled Chill Out Revolution?! LOL! Hajji wanted a blog that would be a part of his main site, Master Stress 101. He wanted a professional blog theme, but one that reflected a relaxed and fun theme  and that would capture his two roles as stress coach and speaker.

By adding personal photos, cool tropical colors, a beach header, and fun fonts; I was able to pull of a blog that truly reflects Hajii’s fun and relaxed personality. (As a note to those of you working with Artisteer, the blog title is actually part of the header graphic so as to keep with the theme. In order to protect the SEO, however, the actual title with web safe text  is still on the header, but is just in white in the corner so you can’t see it but web spiders can.)

I was also able to offer him an affordable rate on a flattened header image to use for his site and a business card design so that his business has a cohesive look, so it was more of a complete marketing package. I look forward to doing more projects with Hajii in the future.

Click on the image to visit Hajii’s blog.

Hajii definitely offers some fun tips on ways to relax and relieve stress. However, no one will ultimately find true and lasting peace without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Our loving Creator does give His children “all things freely to enjoy” and He desires for us to take pleasure in the good gifts He gives. He created us ultimately for His glory, and He receives glory when we are living in harmony with and rejoicing in Him.

The only problem is that we are all sinners by birth and by choice. Because of our sin, we are separated from God and deserving of His judgment. The Good News is that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the one Who created and keeps all things came to earth to take the punishment for our sin on the cross! Praise the Lord! He is the Prince of Peace who came to bring peace between God and sinful man! By turning from our sin and trusting in Christ alone, we can be saved from the wrath we deserve, and can have peace in this life and most importantly throughout eternity with our Savior.

Confused or have questions about what I’m talking about? Email me or visit the Kids 4 Truth website for more answers. Why not take a moment to look up some of the following passages and see for yourself who Christ is? Colossians 1:12-20; Ephesians 2:8-9; John 3:16; Romans 5:12-18; Romans 3:23-25.

This is a blog I designed and have been managing. The owner of the blog is very experienced as a teacher and story teller, but she has almost no experience with computers. She can add to, edit, and categorize her posts, but that’s about it. All of the design work, images, the plug-ins, the set ups, and the ads were done by me.

This blog was designed to showcase animals stories she has written for children, puppets she uses when telling stories, and fun facts about animals. These stories are also being recorded and available on podcast. That has been a new and fun experience for me to work with Audacity in order to put together music, sound effects, and the monologue for each story. If you have pre-school or elementary aged children, I would definitely recommend checking it out. I think they will enjoy these cute animal stories. If you do check it out, make sure to stay posted as more stories will continue to be added and recorded. Eventually, downladable coloring pages will also be available.

In designing this theme, I used real photos and edited them in Photoshop to give them the feel of a painting. These were very quick designs, and I plan on doing further edits on the images within posts, and of course, I’ll be adding more pics to some of the newer chapters which will be posted.

So, check out the Adventures of Sammy the Skunk!

I use iStock if I need to get just the right royalty free picture or image to use for design work. They use a credit system so you can purchase a certain amount of credits for downloading images, audio, or video within a year’s time of when you purchased those credits. Some downloads are worth only 1 credit, while others can be over 30. It depends upon the size and what you want to use it for. You can either buy in bulk at a lower rate, or pay-as-you-go, which I prefer to do. So, for example, I can purchase the lowest option of 18 credits, and use those credits up whenever I feel like it this year.

I was just on their site today purchasing some audio clips to use for someone’s blog. The blog  features children stories which you can read or listen to being read, so I’ve got to do some sound editing over the weekend and see what I can come up with. I still have some credits left with iStock, so I’ll probablly head back over there this weekend to find a few more clips to use. I’ll do a post on the blog I’m working on as soon as the edits are finished.