Callaloo Soup

Me and The Kindle Five Months In

I mentioned back in January that I now have a Kindle , compliments of my sister, who passed hers on to me when she upgraded .

 

 

For some reason even though she already activated her new one, the old one still had all her loaded books. Some kind of Kindle loophole I guess, but a total bonus for me as it meant I essentially got a year's worth of books! (Luckily we do have similar tastes in reading material.)So while I am pretty excited about having all these books to read, and I have been using it pretty much daily (I am a read before falling asleep kind of person), I am even more sure now that real books are better. For me I mean. Here's why

1. It's totally in my head, but because I am reading everything on the same device, I feel like I have been reading just one very long book since January! Sometimes I even get confused and wonder what happened to a plot line or character before remembering that was from another book. Or maybe it's just age, or the fact that I am reading at night when tired?
2. I really miss being able to flip to the back cover of the book to reread the description and promo blurbs.
3. I feel like I don't have a real sense of the book because there's no cover art to look at!
4. You know how when you're reading a book, and something seems wack, or you forget something and you have to flip a few pages back to double check something you might have missed? Yeah, can't really quickly do that with a Kindle.
5. Call me Kindle challenged but I don't get how the locations work....why can't I just click a button to go to a certain page?
6. I miss the feel and smell of paper. So there.

It's just not the same.

I am happy that I have it, and I know it will be great when next I travel. I do like the instant gratification idea of being able to purchase a book and have it immediately if you need it in a pinch. I will probably buy other books for it eventually. Most likely not novels though, maybe more non-fiction or how-to type books.

If you know me, you know that I am a huge technophile. For example while I love paper scrapping, I also do it digitally (I am bi-scraptual!). I guess I just feel like books are sacred, and I worry a bit about where things are headed. Or I am just slowly becoming a curmudgeon.

Do you have a Kindle or other e-reader? What do you love about it? What don't you? Lets's chat in the comments!

A Few Updates About My Shops on Etsy

Hello friends! Just a quick little post to share a few things about my shops on Etsy. I have been a very busy bee getting the new Vintage shop stocked and running. I still have more to come before I see the end of my stash!

 

 

I have currently listed vintage buttons on cards, vintage doilies, and a variety of vintage trims, either in single lengths or as assortments. There's an item for every taste and budget! Still to come are loose buttons, vintage darning and embroidery threads, and vintage French book pages.

 

Pair of Vintage Trims

If you love crafting with trim and lace, you might want to check out my board on Pinterest dedicated to this subject. You don't have to be a member to see it, but if you do want an invitation just let me know in the comments.

 

My original shop is still stocked with my printable posters and chalkboard stickers. I am currently working on a line of journals and notebooks which will be appearing there very soon!

 

 

(Just a tease)

 

I recently launched a Facebook Page for the two shops, and would love it if you would "Like" my page. This is where I will be posting most of the updates and promotions about the shops, as well as hosting giveaways and freebies. You can click "like" over in the sidebar, or just hop on over to Facebook directly. I already have 57 fans for whom I am truly grateful!

And that's what's been happening in the Callaloo Soup Shops world! I'll be happy to answer any questions in the comments. I also welcome any suggestions you may have about items you'd like to see in either shop.

 

P.S. I almost forgot! Look for a tutorial using vintage trim for a simple fashion upcycle project on Friday!

 

 

Franny Freebie | Facebook Cover Photo Templates

Happy Friday! I am back with another Friday Franny Freebie! I switched over to the new Facebook Timeline a few months back and I have been loving it but I wanted to do something fun with my cover photo, that large photo that is across the top of the page. I also came across this Facebook cheat sheet for various image sizes and I finally did something with it!

This is what my timeline looks like today

 

 

I made a layered template collage that I can add photos to. While I was at it I decided to make three other versions.

 

And today I am sharing them all with you! You can download them here.

 

Download the file

 

Once you unzip the file you should be able to use any of the blank templates in both Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements to add your own photos. Here's a video tutorial I've done on how to add photos to layered templates.

 

Using Templates and Clipping Masks from Francine Clouden on Vimeo.

If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask! You can also share this with your friends, but please share the link to my post and not the actual file or the download link.

Thanks!

 

 

Around the Web in 8 (or so) Links

I had a bunch of different tabs open in my browser today, all pages that I had linked to from one place or another. As I was about to bookmark/pin and/or close them I thought "Why not share this collection of whimsy?". And so dear friends, here are 8 of the most recent things I've enjoyed online of late

This feel good video about a young basketballer had me grinning from ear to ear and weeping huge fat tears

I definitely plan on making this citrus body scrub from petitelephant as the colder drier days approach.

Ever feel like crap after looking through a fashion magazine or watching ads? This blog post at Better After will help you to see whay those glam photos we see are far from reality!

This about to launch website called Blitsy is a free members-only online shopping community that offers private, limited-time sale events with the best brands in the crafting industry. I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to offer!

This video showing off Melvin the Magic Mixed Media Machine made me smile, and gave me some ideas for fun activities with Kieran.

I'm hoping that these two articles on actually acheiving your to-do list help to make me more productive!

It's a bit soon for us but I'm bookmarking this post by Karen Walrond on Babble about how she and her husband set up a kid safe computer for their 7 year old.

Happy Surfing!

 

 

Pinterest Primer Part 2 | Tips for Tracking Down Links from Blogs

As you know I have a pet peeve about things being linked incorrectly on Pinterest. Here are a few ways that I have been able to find missing links while pinning to my boards.

As I mentioned before I don't repin from the thumbnail pins, but open each one in a separate tab first. To do this you right click on the pin and choose "Open in new tab". Or if your mouse has a scrolling wheel, you can use it to click on the pin and a new tab automatically opens.

Once all the tabs are open I then check each one by hovering over to see what it is linked to - the URL will pop up just above your task bar. (Actually if Pinterest would make it possible to see the source link in the thumbnail view that would be great!) In some cases it's obvious if the link is the correct one: if it's not clear then I click on the pin which automatically opens the source site.

On a blog I need to search for the exact post the image came from. Sometimes I get lucky and it's right on the front page. Other times not so much. If it has been linked to page 6 or sometimes 45 then I go backwards through the blog archives until I find the post (most blogs will provide a link for getting to the older posts). If that doesn't work then I check to see if the blog has a search function and type in the keyword. Say it's a recipe for lemon garlic chicken, then I type "lemon garlic chicken" in the search field. If this starts taking too long then I just give up.

Another method that works sometimes is to do a google search for the image. I'll type in the keyword and then choose "image" on the google page. One of the results you'll get will no doubt be the image on Pinterest, but lots of times you will find other instances of the image and then you can check to see if they are linked to the original source.

I've also given up pinning anything that comes from Tumblr. That place is like the black hole for links! (And to think I loved it so. Ah youth.) Things get reblogged so many times and links get lost, so when I see an image linked from Tumblr and it has like 14, 367 notes over there I don't have much hope in finding the original source. One day I almost fell out my chair laughing when I clicked on a pin that took me to a Tumblr blog and the source on the Tumblr blog was a pin on Pinterest (which wasn't linked properly)!

Once I've found the original source I copy the URL, then repin the image, and in the pop up window that appears I choose "See it now". At that point I can edit my pin and change the source link.

It's a kind of long process, but I only do this with things I really love. If it's just a cute or funny picture, or a craft that's an "eh, maybe", and it's taking too long to find the source, I just give up and move on. In a way it means I am only pinning the things I really truly love. Ok maybe not 100% but that's what I tell myself!

I hope this helps in some way! And if you have found another way to do this, or have any other tips do share. I'm always looking for ways to make the pinning experience simpler.

Don't forget to link with love!

Linking With Love and Pinning With Perfection

Image by Kal Barteski

There's been quite a bit of talk online recently about respecting copyright and intellectual property online. With the advent of social media bookmarking and sharing sites like Tumblr, weheartit and of course Pinterest, it seems those never well defined lines have become even more blurred.

As I mentioned in my Primer on Pinning post, I am a stickler for making sure that my pins are correctly linked to their sources. Not just because that makes it easier to find the project instructions or recipe directions, but also because it's respectful to the creator of the image, project, photograph or artwork.

So I was very happy when Kal Barteski along with some of her rocking friends started the Link With Love initiative last week. I had been following Kal's posts on a recent incident involving the misuse of one her pieces of work, and when she posted about Link With Love I immediately added the badge to my sidebar, followed Link With Love on Twitter and clicked over to "Like" the page on Facebook.

Link with love is all about making sure that artists, crafters, photographers, musicians, and basically anyone who shares their work online get the proper credit they deserve. Being a part of the initiative means learning what the applicable laws are, and also learning how you can properly credit and link to sources. You can learn more about the initiave here.

A Spin-off Thought

Since all this happened I've been thinking about how these issues affect the scrapbooking industry, specifically publications.. Once upon a time when a magazine published your layout, they asked that you take the image down from any online galleries. Eventually some of the magazines requested that you only submit layouts that were never posted online. I know that Scrapbook Trends still accept layouts that are posted online with the stipulation of taking them down, but now that images can easily be transfered to sites like Tumblr and Pinterest will this still be the case? Has this already changed? (I haven't submitted in quite some time so I am out of the loop.) Does anyone know?

I'm also wondering what is the general feeling among scrapbook designers about sites like Pinterest? I have no problems with my posted pages being pinned by the way. I put them online to share, so as long as they are linked back to me I say pin away! And like I said since I rarely submit anymore I am not too worried from that point of view.

I also want to send a heart felt plea out to everyone who is pinning and sharing scrapbook pages, to please check that you are linking correctly and crediting the person who made the page. Even if you don't put the credit in the description, make sure your pin is linking to the blog post the image is actually posted in, or the exact spot in the gallery it is pinned from. so that the person who made the page will always get the credit.

Okay, I think I will get off my soap box now. Next week I'll share some ways that I have been able to track down the direct links to things I pin to my boards.

 

A Primer for Pinning | How to make the most of Pinterest

Yep, I'm talking about Pinterest again today. I've been busy introducing as many people as I can to this wonderful tool, and since some of you asked for newbie tips, I thought maybe I could share some more detail on how it actually works, and how to make it work for you instead of against you. This is just stuff that I picked up along the way, and that I found works for me, no doubt there are lots of other things I haven't learned yet!

First I recommend you sign in using your Facebook ID, (if you have one). This makes it easy to find and follow your Facebook friends, plus one less set of login info to remember!

Second, start by setting up the different boards you want to use. Pinterest already has some default boards when you sign up, but you can either delete them, or rename them to more customised names. I currently have 24 boards, which seems like a lot, but some of them are for very specific things like Kieran's Birthday planning and Christmas (I don't just go crazy over birthdays). I also have boards for Crafts and DIY, Kid Stuff, Food and Drink, and Crockpot Cooking. These are probably the boards I pin to the most.

Once your boards are set up, and you have found some friends to follow you can start pinning stuff! You can do this in two ways: 1. Repinning items from the people you follow 2. Pinning items from external websites.

1. Repinning within Pinterest

When you log in to Pinterest it automatically shows you the thumbnails of the most recent pins of the people you follow.

 

When you see something you want to save, hover your mouse over the thumbnail and click on repin. You also have the option to either comment on the image, or "Like" it.

 

 

When you click repin a window opens up on top of the same screen. You can still see the original page in the background

 

Use the drop down menu to select which board you want to pin the image to. Fill in a description (this is one of my pet peeves with Pinterest, you can't leave that field blank), then check the box if you want to automatically share the pin on Facebook. Sometimes this box is automatically checked, I'm not sure if it's because the person who you're pinning it from shared on Facebook. In anycase, if you really don't want to share it over there make sure the box is unchecked. (Ask me how I know this!)

Now click repin. Once it's done you get bounced back to the original page. I mentioned before that I didn't like that when I pin something, I don't get taken back to where I was before. This happens if you actually open the pin in a new screen before pinning it. I tend to open all my pins first for two reasons: to see them bigger and be sure it is indeed something I want to save, and to double check that the source link is correct. I quickly learned to open my pins in a separate tab in order to be able to keep scrolling through the thumbnail screen. Yes, this does mean that I wind up with a gazillion tabs open which I then need to go through to pin to my boards, but let me explain.

When I first started using Pinterest I would happily repin thumbnails willy nilly. When I would go back to try to cook the recipe, or make the craft project I found that the source link did not get me back to the exact blog post or part of the site with the instructions I needed. Sometimes it wasn't even a link to a recipe, just to a pretty photograph. That doesn't help me get dinner made people!

2. How to pin and link to the correct source.

The second way to pin images is to save them from external websites. There are two ways to do this.

The hard way

Ok, it's not really hard, it just involves more steps and takes more time. When you want to add an image you can choose Add a Pin from the drop down Add menu at the top of the Pinterest Screen. It opens up this window

You can add the URL of the site the image is on, and Pinterest will pull all the images in to a slide show on the left. You then scroll through the slide show, choose the image you want, fill in the other details and hit pin. You can also click on upload, to add an image from your hard drive.

The easy way

Did you see the message at the top of the Add screen?

Pinterest has created a bookmarklet (called the pinmarklet - oh wait, maybe it's just me that calls it that?) which is a little button that you drag onto your browser toolbar.

This is my preferred method. Here's a scenario:

You're browsing an awesome blog and you see the most brilliant image ever. You must pin it now! Your hand grabs the mouse and you move the arrow towards the pinmarklet. WAIT! STOP! First things first. If you are on the home page of the blog, or happily browsing through page 11 of the blog, you first need to click into the specific post that the image is in. Pinterest will link the image you pin to whatever URL is in the address bar. If you want to be sure to correctly link the image you have to have the permalink of the specific post in the address bar. On most blogs you can get to it by clicking on the title of the post. Some other blogs will have a link to the permalink in the foot of the blog post.

This also applies if you've done a search for something on a blog, or in Google or Yahoo search. Make sure that you are pinning from the actual post the image comes from. What happens if you don't? Well what is page 11 today, will be page 22 in a couple months, so when next you go to find the tutorial instructions, or the recipe, you will end up in an entirely different place on the blog. I can't tell you how much time I spend hunting down the right blog post to go with a recipe or craft that I really really really want to do. I want you to avoid this frustration by all means! Ok, vent over. I feel better already.

Now that you are in the right spot click on the pinmarklet and a screen will come up with all the images from the page.

Hover over the one you want and click Pin This

The window will pop up and you can fill in the info as usual, then pin the image.

And there you go! Now that I am at the end of this long post I realise that a video might have been a better idea! I hope that this helps out the new Pinners some, and makes Pinterest a bit less of a time waster.

For the next installment in this series (wait, it's a series now?) I'll talk about things like adding boards, rearranging them and other little things within Pinterest itself.

Now all that's left to say is Happy Pinning!

 

 

 

Recently Pinned

This 30-Day Photography Challenge from Super Barbs to my Photography Board. I think I will do it in June!

This gorgeous idea for using washi tapes from How About Orange to my Crafts & DIY board.

Thinking about getting this for Kieran's room, Pinned to my Kid Stuff board

I'm thinking I can try recreating this myself. Another one on the Crafts and DIY board.

 I love this printable mantra about motherhood which about sums up my approach. At least on the days that I remember to breathe. Pinned to my Quotes and Quotables board.

 

Finally this funny e-card, which sums up my life so well sometimes. Pinned to my Cute and Funny Stuff board

 

I'd love to see what you've pinned recently! Let me know your user name in the comments so that I can find and stalk, I mean follow, you over there.I do still have invites so if you want to try it out let me know (and make sure to fill in the e-mail field in the comment form).

Have a very pinteresting weekend!

I've Broken Up With Tumblr

It started innocently enough: someone mentioned some cool site for bookmarking called Pinterest. I checked it out, but you needed an invite, so I decided not to even bother sign up. But it kept popping up and then finally one of my WCS team mates really raved about it, then another one sent me an invite and I was hooked.

At first I was just stepping out on my beloved Tumblr,(remember how I waxed poetic about it last year?) because I didn't want to lose the things I had bookmarked there, and there was no easy way to transfer them over. But when I saw the organisational potential I found myself spending more and more time on Pinterest, and less and less with that other one.

I love the fact that I can have a separate board for each interest, it makes it so much easier to find things later, and maybe I am just extrapolating, but I have actually gone back and done a bunch of projects, which never seemed to happen when I was using Tumblr. Pinterest is how I kept track of all my ideas for Kieran's party, and then how I was able to narrow it down to the ones I wanted to use.

The main con I have found so far is the lack of ease of navigation. Unlike Tumblr, when I repin something from within the site I don't get bounced back to where I was originally. This means I emd up with a ridiculously large amount of open tabs, as I scroll through and find things I like. But I can deal with it. The site developers are constantly making improvements, so hopefully this is something they will address eventually.

As with Tumblr the real power of the site comes in when you start following others and seeing all the pretty things they post, but you can also use their pinmarklet to add things from external sites.They make it really easy to find people too, since you can sign in with your Facebook account and add your friends from there. So if you're already on, feel free to follow me. If you'd like an invite I'd be happy to send you one (I have six available right now). Just let me know in the comments or by e-mail and I will hook you up!

 

Why I Use Twitter and Facebook

I recently came across a couple of blog posts extolling why one might want to consider deleting one's Facebook and Twitter accounts. While I can totally see how these social media sites wouldn't be an effective use of time for some, I find them very useful.

First off, the internet in general is a major part of my life because I live in a country where apart from my husband and brother-in-law, I am only close to one other person who speaks my language. Honestly, without the internet it would have been much harder for me to survive in France, expecially those first few years when I was still learning the language. E-mail, yahoo messenger and scrapbooking message boards helped me feel a lot less lost and alone when I first moved over.

I welcomed the explosion of social media with open arms and jumped right on that band wagon too! I use both Twitter and Facebook for professional as well as personal reasons.

Both are a great way for me to promote what I am up to, as well as find out what other people in my field, or who have the same interests, are doing and reading. I can't begin to number how many awesome websites, programs, books, movies and music groups I have discovered thanks to the links that others share.

For me this is the power of Twitter. With only 140 characters to express yourself, you have to cut out a lot of the waffle and get your point across succintly. I consider Twitter a fantastic source of information. Yes, I do also chat with others, and have been building some relationships there, I love using it to find information or answers to burning questions.

In general, if you have a question about something seemingly random and send a tweet about it, you get a host of useful answers back. Love it! There was a point when I did find Twitter overwhelming, and with the time difference I have with most of the people I interact with there, I always felt like I was missing out, or had to go back and read all the tweets from the night before. But then I read this great post by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, where he likened Twitter to being a river that you can dip into from time to time. It changed my entire perspective, and the way I went about using it. Oh and I swtiched to using TweetDeck, which is a desktop (or mobile) application for Twitter. That also made my Twitter time much more effective.

Facebook on the other hand is really more social for me. While I do also use it for networking and promotional purposes, what I love about it is that I can be in contact with people from all areas of my life on one single website! I don't need to go to a scrapbooking forum, an alumni board for my high school or university, or a number of different places to keep in touch.

With one log in I can be in touch with high school and university friends, former colleagues, other scrapbookers, my sister, cousins I haven't seen in donkey years, even ones I don't know well or have never met. I can check in quickly to see what's up in the life of someone I may not have the time to call. With the time difference this is extremely useful for me, and I dare say also for my friends and family on the other side of the Atlantic. If at 7:00 am one morning, my friend Mabel from Puerto Rico pops into my head, I can check her wall and leave her a note. I bet she prefers that to me waking her up at 1:00 a.m. EST!

Of course nothing can compare to a phone call or a visit, but this is a great way for me to keep in touch on a regular basis with the people that matter. What could be better than having an almost daily interaction with friends and family who are far away? My sister gets to see Kieran grow up through the photos that I post of him, and I get to commiserate with her on her crazy snowfalls in Massachusetts.When it's grey and cold outside I can look at the photos posted by my friends back home and be jealous, but yet cheered up. And birthdays! I love getting a ton of messages on my birthday, and enjoy posting greetings to everyone else.

However I don't play games or take quizzes. I should say I no longer play games or take quizzes (sorry to all the FarmVille et al folks!), and I don't send people hearts, flowers or drinks. I will however poke you back if you poke me!

So tell me, why do you use Twitter and Facebook?(or why DON'T you?)