I bought one of my mugs for a friend's birthday last week... so this week zazzle.co.uk decided to have a 50% off mugs sale. Most upsetting... but maybe someone else can take advantage! The sale code also includes 45% off cushions, and lasts until midnight tonight (28/01/2016). For American visitors, the .com site is currently running a 15% discount code on all lines.
Transform any of these designs on Zazzle by changing or adding new text, or by picking a different background colour.
A quick post, with information which might be obvious depending on how you use Pinterest, so apologies if that's true for you.
If you click a 'share on Pinterest' button like the one at the foot of this Blogger post, Pinterest automatically chooses an image from the post to be the cover image of your pin. You don't get to choose or edit the image, and it might not be the image you want. Which could be annoying.
To get around this, you must instead pin the blog post from within Pinterest, using the 'Add a Pin' button/panel, and then copying and pasting the URL of the page from your browsers address bar. Add a pin in this way, and you will be presented with a selection of images from the blog post or page, and you can choose the cover image you want.
Use the 'Add a Pin' panel highlighted here in red. Note my tragic two followers. Follow me out of pity, I'll take what I can get.
Again, I'm sure it's blindingly obvious if you're already in the habit of doing things this way. If you're not, I found it lead to the kind of frustrating web search which yields many answers, but all to questions other than the one I was asking. Hopefully this little post will contribute to redressing the balance.
From inspiration to product in just twenty years... (!)
Hearing the Babylon Zoo version of Spaceman for the first time
1. In the mid nineties I was studying printed textiles at university. It was around the time when the Levi's 'Spaceman' advert was on the TV, and Blur had released their single and video to 'The Universal'. Now known in the UK as the British Gas tune.
2. I took the sci-fi theme, and looked at other influences such as The Designers Republic (bold, futuristic, flat colours), and retro comic book sci-fi (1950's and 60's Barbarella type stuff).
People once did art on paper - made from trees!
3. We had no access to computers (life was hard back then, we lived in a shoebox at the bottom of a lake etc), so to get bright flat colours for repetition, I made simple, abstract designs out of cut paper. Bless!
4. Generally speaking, the limitations of traditional media can push you in directions and styles you wouldn't necessarily go with software; it also creates subtle imperfections. These are good things.
5. I don't have much old work left lying about, and as a rule I'd say it's better to look forward and make shiny new things...
...but these are simple, bold and unusual - and I can guarantee they're worth nothing to me hidden away.
6. Twenty years after cutting them out of paper, I can apply these and other patterns to previews of products, and quickly present them for sale to a worldwide audience. What next, hover boards!?
When hover board ruins your Christmas spirit pic.twitter.com/ZvZYbRi05h
— R❀BBI (@thenamesrobbi) December 25, 2015
Note: This is not me. I am male and do not own a hoverboard.
A few varied products from my two fledgling stores on Zazzle: PatternPie and NoodleWings. Zazzle usually has a promotional offer running, the current code is WINTERSALE16 which gives you 20% off everything.
A buyer can transfer the t-shirt designs onto other clothing on the site: hoodies, other t-shirt styles, mens, womens, kids and baby clothes.
Products with 'Personalised' in the title can have their text changed via a simple form on the product page (I wanted to say 'personalisable', but that's not a word); everything shown here is customisable (that is a word) to a degree - background colours, image size and so on - that's if you're willing to click 'Customise it' and get familiar with Zazzle's simple editing tools. Go on, be brave.
This is my first post on this blog, and first post anywhere this year, so happy new year and all the best for 2016 :)
