Ah the sweet relief of rounding third base and almost having one foot on home.  This week I did a lot of tying of loose ends on the Ribbons & Stitches website. There are now items to purchase on the shop page, as well as items listed on Etsy.  The shop page is actually really cool you can add things to a cart and I made a customized ‘add to cart’ button that matches the rest of the site.  The shopping cart is all linked to PayPal and if someone buys something I will be alerted and the money would go into my PayPal account.  I am sure I will expand on this page of the site later, but for now it is rather basic just because of time constraints and the fact that I have been concentrating more on the videos and the look of the site in general.

Monday I will be sending out the invitations for people to join the site (I put the invitation in a previous blog post).  Everything will be totally done by Friday, but I am thinking that sending it out on a Friday might be less effective than a Monday, in that people will forget about it over the weekend.  My hope is to have a little bit of activity on the site before the exhibition, even if I have to force my fellow classmates to participate.

I knew pretty early on that I wanted to make textures a big part of the site.  With that in mind I took many different pictures of all the fabrics I have and set the header of the site to change every time the page refreshes.  So every time a person goes to the site they will see a different texture close up of fabric. The picture here is a screenshot of the home page with my favorite picture.  I am really happy with all of the photographs on the site, I think it really drives the aesthetic quality. 

As for a background texture image I think I have given up on that dream.  Every time I tried to put one up it was too busy along with the pictures for each individual post.  I also wanted to keep the picture really light, because (in my opinion) it looks better with a lighter color on the background, and every background picture I put up was way to dark.  So for the moment that idea is scrapped, but I guess all it takes is one cool picture to change it all,  and the ‘needles’ picture that is on my portfolio was a total fluke.  Perhaps lightning will strike again while I am taking pictures.

I think I am going to use this blog to continue blogging for Ribbons & Stitches, just because I have it all set up already.  I do plan on keeping up with the site, just as a hobby and a creative outlet for myself, and perhaps it will turn into something more, perhaps not.  I enjoy doing it so I am going to keep it up.

I also found some footage I forgot I had, so I made another video today about how to hem pants, I now have a grand total of ten videos.  I totally forgot I even shot that segment, but I was happy to have the extra footage. The funny thing is I was just thinking that I should have made a video about hemming pants because it is really easy and it is something that people often have trouble with.  It was a nice surprise when I was looking through all my SD cards.

I am happy with everything I have done thus far.  I guess looking back I wish the lighting had been better for some of the videos, but there is nothing I can do about it now except learn from it and move forward.  I think the site looks great over all and I am glad I did it on WordPress, I have actually had a friend ask me to make them a site on WordPress so I am glad to have the experience.  But anyway, I am excited about the exhibition and I am going to bring a bunch of the things I have made so that people can see what I have done.  To sum it all up please give me an H (I’m just joking (or am I? (I think I am (I probably am (but I’m not (so lets see an H)))))).