So we all know Picnik is closing soon (sad face ). Hands up who used this every now and then? I did! I loved the ease of making a collage. Now what are we going to do??

I decided to do a little research and found these sites below. I have only had a quick fiddle with them, so can’t say I am an expert at them at the moment.

 1. FotoFlexer - a free online tool.

2. Pixlr - great effects and editing capabilities. Almost like Photoshop.

3. Aviary - a free online tool with great effects.

4. BeFunky - a free online too.

5. Photovisi - will do collages and is free.

6. Then of course you can download Picasa  to your computer which has editing effects.

7. Or Picnik had integrated it’s effects with Google+. You’ll have to sign up for a Google+ account (go to your photos and click Creative Kit). You can alter a photo and add text, but there is no option for collages or frames here yet.

So at the moment, I feel like I might be using multiple sites to create the one look I am after, until someone tells me there is a better option!

Let me know if you’ve found anything else.

PS. With the closing of Picnik also comes the closing of Google Friend Connect (for non-blogspot blogs ie. WordPress blogs), so the only way to follow me now is via my subscribe buttons on the top right. If you’re a non-blogspot blog have you got your subscribe buttons in place? Have you alerted your readers?

…

Cruise says thank you for all the birthday messages yesterday. He read them all with a smile on his face. We flipped between the blog, twitter and facebook to read them all. He had a great day! Now we’re gearing up for the party this weekend.

Today I’m off to visit my friend Emma, then return to this computer where I have a hundred jobs booked for The Media Maid. Busy times! Pulling in the staff to help. Love it.

Have a great day! X

Cruise was born (22/02/2002 – easy date to remember!). The name Cruise put people in a little spin. No one had heard of that before. My Cruise was born before David and Becks and Lleyton and Bec had their Cruise’s. My mother-in-law struggled to get his name. We laugh about it now (oh, wait until I tell you one day about her face when the next child was born TEX!).

I was a scrapbooker waaaay back when it was all the rage, so I can’t scan these precious photos – I had to take a photo of them.

Check me out! How puffy was I? Oooo short hair! So much funny looking back…

So Happy 10th Birthday to my biggest boy Cruise!

We have a big day planned. Donuts in his classroom, out for dinner tonight and then 15 kids for a party at Laser Skirmish on Saturday (I designed the invites and husband printed them). He is double digits after all so he deserves the big shebang! Plus, I think he’s a pretty good kid.

Mummy thinks he’s a bit cute too.

Happy Birthday Cruise. X

The winner of the ipad cover is

Jessica from Lessons in Life and Love.

The winners of the wrist key fob’s are

Jo from Violet & Rose

and

Ez from Life…Style’n.

Jo, you get first choice of which one you prefer.

Thanks everyone for entering! Back soon with another giveaway!

A bit of hanging out.

The crew. The big JIB (camera on a crane) in the background.

The best bit about living in a country area is that there is only usually 1 flight out of Wagga to Melbourne on a Saturday. This meant I HAD to take the 7.30am flight… a whole day of shopping was then had…. We shopped and ate and shopped and ate… We weren’t required for ‘duties’ until Sunday. So we relaxed and chilled out with some Chumps.

Following the gathering with the new blockheads, we had a little party. Here is Amie and I all frocked up. Now you’ll have to watch the show to see us all together!

Oh, and I got to meet Giaan Rooney. Nicest gal eva!

I’ll be back tomorrow to draw the winners of my competitions.

Life and this is keeping me busy. Plus, I think it will be nice to step away for a while. I’ll be back soon though! Still have to draw the winners of my 2 x giveaways.

Miss you already! X

I have this little ensemble I purchased recently. Not sure where I will wear it, but I thought it was a little Summer/Autumn outfit. Usually we do Autumn/Winter but I like to be different! Ha! Perfect for going from the heat in to the cooler months.

 ♥ Jeggings (yes, I too am a fan of them – turn away if you hate them ) in the colour Indigo bought at Witchery – click here.

♥ Yellow top with knot straps bought at Witchery – click here. It’s really long. A necessity if you’re wearing Jeggings (they are different from leggings remember? #leggingsarenotpants).

♥ Red wedges bought at FSW.

♥ Jewellery bought at Diva.

I have a teensy obsession with yellow at the moment, if you didn’t already guess! I have a party coming up and I’ve bought a yellow dress online. Waiting for that to arrive before I share it. I could be a doozy. Buying online is always such a risk!

Thanks for stopping in today.

She beat me to it! She’s like a machine!

Yes we both bought new beds (oh and our Mum did too!), so we’re all on the bed-head-making bandwagon…

So, Amie has done hers in hessian. Yep, hessian. I haven’t seen it close up but knowing her it would be awesome and dramatic. I doubt these photos do it justice.

I can see that with this bed-head she got a piece of foam cut. Last time we made one (see the picture below), we actually used wadding (stuff you put in quilts) bought from Spotlight.

Still love that bedroom… sigh. I wanted to take everything home with me. Especially that pillow. Will be a life long love of mine!

Ok, back to Amie’s bed-head… she got a piece of MDF board cut, a piece of foam, the fabric and then stapled it around it tight… and DONE!

It really is the easiest thing to make.

Love the layered rugs, and funky cushions. Very cool.

When she was purchasing the fabric the lady asked “what are you making?” and Amie told her what she was creating.

The lady said “wow, we had a run on bed-heads when that tv show The Block was on. You know those 2 sisters made a bed-head. Did you watch it?“

Amie smiled and nodded but didn’t say that was me. She grabbed her stuff and headed of laughing to herself. Hilarious! That happens to us all the time

I have bought some sample fabrics for my own bed-head and am waiting for them to arrive. I’m leaning to the aqua (your votes told me so!).

Today I’m off to have brunch with school mum’s. We’ve been doing that on Tuesdays. Eggs Benedict here I come!

Have a great day. X

Road trip was sensational… if you followed my twitter stream you’d see a few sneak bits here and there. More about that little trip soon.

I have another one this weekend, but this one will be tagged as #planetrip #nokids #nohusband #withsister. This trip is going to be awesome. A few tv camera’s here and there… Ooops, that’s enough. No more secrets Katrina!

I promise I’ll share it all with you! You know I will.

Ok, anyway, what I’m writing about today is The Block. So many exciting things happening for the next series. Oh, I’m bursting to tell you! I’m a tease… I will tell you there is a new judge though. Shaynna Blaze from Selling Houses Australia has joined Neal and John. Shaynna will be awesome! I’m attending an auction event with Andrew Winter (host of Selling Houses Australia on the Lifestyle Channel) in a couple of weeks, so I cannot wait to meet him! Below is an article in the Herald Sun with Shaynna talking about The Block 2012.

Right. Onto the next topic… This is big people!

Have you voted for The Block to win a Logie?

Well, why not?! It’ll only take you a few seconds.

You have only 1 week left. 1 week! Get to it. Go here to vote. Pretty pretty please!

Also, don’t forget my 2 giveaways here and here.

Have a great Sunday! X

How cute is this little bowl? I was visiting my sister-in-law yesterday and she had her nespresso pods in one and when I ooohh-eh and ahhhh-ed she pulled out another one and said I could have it. I was excited!

It’s the small things peeps

Then in the post arrived a new iphone case (yes, I am obsessed with them!). It cost $3 and free postage. How do they make them so cheap? So now I’m all polka-dotted up!’

Speaking of polka-dots… I did this blog for my IRL (in real life) friend, Kim. Her blog is amazing. We have seen so much sadness and suffering in this world lately, but hers is one of pure miracles and triumphs. She has been so lucky to expand her family to 7 with 3 surrogate babies from India. Yes it’s true!

A-m-a-z-i-n-g.

Today I am flat out! Blog designing and packing. Husband and I are heading off on a little road trip. Just us. With other adults. No kids. We’ll be heading off really early tomorrow morning. I’m so excited. I’ll share the trip with you soon. So, I’ll be signing off from the blog until next week.

Have a great day! X

1/2/3/4/5/6/ 7+8 Logos

Oh boy it’s been busy at The Media Maid. This is only half of what I have been up to! Loving it. There are some great blogs out there and some really creative people. I just help them set everything out better. I get a lot of people who also ask me to just pop in to their blog and fix the layout, add some buttons or menus. There has been a lot of that going on. Happy to help.

With over 200 million blogs worldwide it’s a tough market out there. If you’re serious about blogging a good design can make you. A bad design can break you. I wrote about my blog design tips here last week. Everyone is leaning towards crisp and clean designs with great colour combinations and small repeatable patterns (if any). Small narrow headers are all the go without a lot of scrapbook style graphics. Backgrounds are really simple to save on load time.

Last week I also wrote about how to back up your blog. Then I received an email yesterday asking me to see if I could help Lisa King (Lisa has lost her son and husband all within the last 4 months. You can read Lisa’s story here) as she has been having trouble logging in to her blog and was worried about hackers. Blogger had also noticed unusually high activity on her blog. We know because it’s a Blogspot blog, Lisa doesn’t technically own it, so yes, Blogspot can pull it down if they so wish. So whilst she had backed it up, there were still concerns about it all going missing. This is a stress! So last night I talked her through using this free service  Blog Booker.  It takes only a few minutes (depending on your blog size), but will convert your blog to a PDF. Lisa had 6500 pages! But it worked and she was so happy.

Ok, I’m off to do some more blog designing…

Have a great day! X