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Halloween is coming up :)

HeliumEasy Halloween crafts





New life

Hello everyone!
I am back after a quite a lengthy hiatus, and am happy to say that I am currently writing to you from Croatia!
There were a lot of tough times regarding my pets and shipping them, lack of internet, and in general NOTHING going my way. Now, however, I feel great. I have been here only a couple of days but the difference is drastic. I am not stressed out anymore, I feel great physically (save for my feet which have been killing me for over a week). I am so rested! Its ridiculous! I go to bed after midnight and wake up before 7am on my own, fully rested and ready to go!
Days are going by much slower, but in a good way. There is no rush and I feel like more can get done in less time. We have looked at some houses and will make a purchase soon, hopefully.
I am back to doing some major writing work and dedicating time to this blog as well as launching a freelancing   website.
Currently I am  thinkering with Textbroker and 
Sponsored Tweets:

SponsoredTweets referral badge


So far so good with both of them. 
You can look forward to a final review of readbud.com as well in the near future (hopefully) as I am nearing payout. I often forget to do it though and its being buggy more and more so my hopes are not high of it being legit but I figure...Ive gone over $41.00 already...I'm not going to stop now! 



Congratulations to all those of you who have earned that fifth and final star with Helium. It has taken a lot of work and effort, but what does it all mean in terms of how much you can earn with Helium now? Well it means that with a little bit of planning and some time set aside each day that you could come up with a nice little income for yourself. Surely it wont be like a full time job but nonetheless it will be a significant amount. So how can I earn you ask? I assume that you are already familiar with the ins and outs of Helium and its rules if you have come this far (if not read up on: How to increase your earnings at Helium, Earning rating stars on Helium as well as the Helium Help Guide) so I will jump right into it. To make the most of the stars... Read more.



Earning rating stars on Helium

HeliumEarning rating stars on Helium




How to increase your earnings at Helium

HeliumHow to increase your earnings at Helium


Starting out on Helium.com

How to submit articles:
- If you take a look at the front page on the left side you will see different topics ( Auto's, Business, Health & Fitness....) these are called "Channels".

- If you have some diet articles, for instance, if you click on Health & Fitness you will see a sub-channel for Diets go to it.
(if you can't see a good sub-channel for your article then there is always an "other sub-channel")

- Now there are already a bunch of articles there, and the way Helium works is you have a title, for instance, "How to lose weight?" and any amount of people can write into it. These articles get rated by your peers and the best ones go to the top.

- You will want to write in Titles that have 4 other articles at most because only the first 5 in a title are paid.

- If you are the first one to write in a title you get an extra $1.00

- If you don't see a title that works out for you, or think of something new you can suggest your own (go to My Helium and Suggest a Title link on left).

Earnings & Payments:
- I mentioned earlier that the articles get rated. How much you earn on Helium depends on how many stars you have. There are writing and rating stars. The writing ones basically you get more of them the more articles you put up with higher scores (you need 10% of your articles to be competitive= in a Title with at least 2 others). The rating stars you get by rating other peoples articles.
This page explains it a lot better than me: Helium Stars and Badges

- You get paid for all your articles (there are a few channels that are unpaid, they will be listed in the link below) as long as you put your articles in titles that have no more than 4 articles already. You also have to maintain your stars to get paid, it seems scary and i was so nervous but really there's nothing to it!

- You will start off getting paid $ .50 per article or 1.50 if you are the first person to write to it. This is for one writing star. As you write more articles your stars will go up. Right now I have five stars and earn 2.50 per article or 3.50 if I am the first person to write in it.

- That is the "upfront payment" part of Helium, another way you earn money is from daily revenue.

- Helium also has Writing contests that last two weeks, there is always at least five of them up. You can earn from 10.00-50.00 if you finish in top 3.

- There is a "Marketplace" there as well. Publishers post requests here with guidelines of how they want articles written and if you want you submit your work, if they like it they buy it! I've seen the prices for these to run anywhere from 4.00-200.00


Please don't get discouraged if all this seems like a lot of work, or overwhelming. I am currently unemployed so I do all I can to earn money and just assume others will want AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! And a lot of people don't jump into it with all they have.

Oh yeah the month for earnings on Helium runs from 25th-24th, then from 24th to last day of the month is the time for stars to settle and what not. Whatever condition your account is on the last day of the month that is how much you will get paid. Earnings are announced around the 1st of the month and you have until the 4th to request earnings (25.00 minimum). You need a Paypal addy for this. Your earnings will come to Paypal around 10th.



Helium.com too confusing

I've come across many attempted Helium users on other websites that find Helium.com to be too confusing so I am going to post a series of articles that will, hopefully, clear things up a bit!

Student Center Network

HeliumWebsite reviews: Student.com




A little rant (when I was supposed to be writing articles) over my time in Texas

Imagine being in Texas, in a small town right on the border with Mexico. High noon and the temperatures in the hundreds, you are in an open yard with no shade. Not only that you need to work around a heated semi truck. You just got your flatbed loaded full of onions, six feet high and forty-eight feet long. You need to tarp that load up, strap it down, and otherwise secure it with bungee cords and other equipment. The tarps, usually black, are not only heated and dirty, but also quite heavy. Most of them usually being well over fifty pounds, the bigger ones definitely much more.
So now you have a temperature of about 103 degrees Fahrenheit, the sun burning your skin. You have heavy, poorly folded tarps that you have to get on top of those six foot high onions. The heat alone will make you unwell. Climb up onto a trailer and within seconds you are unsure of your step, you are thinking you will fall. Mix in the stench of warm onions and you become nauseous. You somehow get the tarp on top of the onions, you climb up as well. Watching your step, half crawling you try to spread the tarp out evenly. You nearly fall through the onions three times due to uneven placement and shifting of sacks. Once your tarp is spread and covering the load as evenly as possible a wind blows, not a welcome refreshing breeze, but a hot blow that nearly knocks you off the top of the onions, it flips the tarp smacking you in the face and folding one half of the dirty, smelly and heated material completely over you. If you don’t pass out at this point and manage to get from under the tarp, feel free to pat yourself on the back.
Now is the time to get down off the onions, and off the trailer. This might get you excited, but beware! It is often a harder task then getting up. You are off the trailer, you are pulling out the bungee cords that will keep the tarp sides down to the trailer. That wind that you encountered a few minutes ago, its back, oh and is it back! Without a warning it will magically lift the whole tarp up off the trailer, fly it to the side of the truck and lay it down flat. At this point you are so sick from the heat you don’t know if this has just happened or if your mind is playing tricks on you. After all, you have only seen the likes of this done in an Aladdin cartoon!
Near tears, you decide to take a break in the cab. You jump in and the first thing you, quite stupidly, do is rub the sweat off your eyes. If you were near tears before, you are definitely crying now. Surely you forgot you were just rolling all over the onions, waging war on them, and now they score another point. Oh yeah, your air conditioning is dead too. You frantically wet paper towels to cool yourself, squirt yourself with water, and in the last act of desperation chug a bottle of ice cold water. Bad idea.
You force yourself to go back outside, you have to deal with that load sooner or later…sooner actually. The heat hits you, and the stomach cramps from the cold water begin.



I don't suppose I can use that as an article???

How to recognize paid-to site scam

There are plenty of websites around offering you payments in return for reading articles or emails, clicking on adverts, filling out surveys or otherwise participating in the websites activities. This can be a great opportunity to earn some cash, unfortunately many of them end up proving to be scams. If they are not scams many will pay so little and set the payout amount too high to ever realistically accomplish the set payout goal. And while it is often quite hard, or near impossible, to figure out which of these websites are a scam without your own trial and error, there are a few things you can do to help yourself decide whether a site is worth giving a try or not... Read more.





Slacking....ish

Ahhhhhhhh I'm back to my usual ways of slacking. Well sort of! I have worked on marketing my articles and that is so tedious and time consuming. My twitter has grown to 1635 followers and I'm so happy with it! I have also dedicated quite a bit of time to SocialOomph so hopefully that will be paying off. It is on a one month trial with me, and so far so good, I am definitely seeing a slow n steady increase in Helium revenue!
At this moment in time I am at a point where I am consciously doing more work for less money.
However, I am building a freelancer website which I plan to "unleash" once I move. I am putting it off because at the moment I write when I catch time and my current situation is unpredictable so I do not want to start getting potential customers and then have to turn them down!
The website will be for a team of freelancers, my husband and myself. He does some writing as well and along with writing services we will offer some design...nothing big but logo design, business card design, etc. So a little bit of my time is going into prepping that.
Oh yeah! My hubby (Sheps) has made us a logo which I am extremely happy with! So far it can only be seen on Twitter but we are getting around to slowly implementing it to the blog and other social networking profiles and merging them to form a brand.....yeah a brand of a sort! I want all of our freelancing stuff to be associated with one another.
In the midst of all this I have pretty much neglected the blog :( . Hopefully I get back on track with it!



Readbud

So I have gotten word of a new website, which could be a hit or a miss but I thought why not give it a try? It is just another way to earn a few pennies online, however it could be worth your time if it is able to provide enough work.
The website in question is

'




The way it works is that you sign up and read articles for a small payout. Ideally you would ACTUALLY READ the given article, notice the advertisements and maybe even click on some. In reality all you do is open the offered article, scroll to the bottom and give it a 1-5 rating.
Before you open each article you will be notified how much that specific article is paid. I have spent 12 minutes on the website, 15 including account set up, and have earned $1.16.
The articles I have read were paid from $0.04-0.10.
When you sign up you will be asked to choose up to 50 interest areas, these are the areas in which you will receive the articles you will read. DO select all 50 choices. You can change your selection once every 24hrs if you want to keep things interesting or just get more articles heading your way.
How much you get paid per article depends on its length.

Article content word count and corresponding rewards:

  • Under 100 : 1 cent
  • Between 101 and 200 : 2 cents
  • Between 201 and 300 : 3 cents
  • Between 301 and 400 : 4 cents
  • Between 401 and 500 : 5 cents
  • Between 501 and 600 : 6 cents
  • Between 601 and 700 : 7 cents
  • Between 701 and 800 : 8 cents
  • Between 801 and 900 : 9 cents
  • Between 901 and 1500 : 10 cents
  • Between 1501 and 2000 : 15 cents
  • Over 2000 : 20 cents
I have been offered only 21 articles so far and have easily gone through them in 12 minutes while doing three other things at the same time.

Assuming the website can provide enough articles, I think its worth the time. At this rate if I spent the whole hour doing this I'd be paid $5.80 an hour... Not too bad for an online gig.
They have a pretty high minimum for the payout. You will need to earn $50.00 before you can request a payment. They will pay you via Paypal so that is pretty decent as well.
They have refferal programs where you get $5.00 when the person which signed up through you reaches their minimum payout amount.
On paper the website looks great, however I have spent only 15 minutes on it so far and it will take some time to see if it is 100% legit, and whether it has enough articles for me to rate.
If you are interested in trying it out please sign up through the above link as my referral.


Inbox Dollars


Inbox Dollars is one of many online websites which give you a chance to earn money in return for various small favors, or to "Be rewarded for your online activities" as the websites slogan would say.

Inbox Dollars offers a $5.00 Sign on Bonus and requires you have at least $30.00 earned in your account before it sends out your check. The way to earn this money is to complete certain tasks such as reading the Paid Emails, and by reading that means clicking on them so you are taken to another link. You need to click so the site would register you looking at the advertisement . Just clicking on emails will earn you around two cents per email.

There are other ways to earn money as well and they are sorted...Read More.

Tweepi

In the previous post I quickly showed you a way to connect a few of your different accounts for auto posting on Twitter. All of that is great and valuable info, however if no one sees it then it fails.
Twitter doesn't allow automated adding of friends, or following rather. I have learned a way to follow a bunch of people at once with ease and still be in compliance to Twitter rules.

Assuming you have a Twitter account already go to:








Now on the lower right hand side you will see a link saying Try out 'Geeky Follow' >>  click it and you will be lead to a page that asks for a screen name of a Twitterer that shares the same interests as you, or that you are interested in. So you can enter @TeamShepherd, for instance, and hit enter.
You will be asked to allow Tweepi access to your existing Twitter account. Once that is done you will have a list of the searched users followers.
While the "Select All" button is disabled in order to follow Twitter rules there is a trick you can do to select all users shown on the page with two clicks. Hold SHIFT while you click on the first user on the list, scroll down to the end of the list and hold SHIFT while you click on the last user.
The list displays 20 users per page. You can change this to 40 if you scroll down and tweet about the Tweepi, don't worry they have a preset tweet waiting for you at the bottom of the page!
This is way easier than completely manually going around and following users, and its still quality follows :)







I was talking with people about connecting as many of your social networking (of any kind) accounts to Twitter and intertwining them.
Here is a quick run-down of how to do what I did with my accounts:

Make an account, or just use one of the OpenID options, on
twitterfeed
This is a place where you can basically put in a bunch of your RSS feeds to be posted to Twitter.
If you want an automatic tweet every time you submit an article to Helium you will need to hookup the RSS feed for your About Me page.
- Go to the About Me page through the link you would give to other people to view it (http://www.helium.com/users/491133 rather than http://www.helium.com/users/edit_show/491133)
- Click on the small "H" icon to the left of the address bar, click More Info, then go to the Feeds tab and copy the link listed.

Now with the copied link go to your TwitterFeed account, click the Create New Feed button and follow the instructions.
The process for your blogger (and I assume other blogs as well) is the same.

To connect your Facebook to Twitter go to Facebook > Twitter.
If you have Myspace, other blogs, i think some websites will let you connect with Twitter too, you can pretty much connect either like this or through a similar app.

I hope this was at least somewhat helpful! I like it because each time I submit an article to Helium it goes straight to Twitter, same as when I post them to my Fan page on FB. It's convenient.

Easter Crafts


happy easter. by ~julkusiowa on deviantART


Easter is a holiday usually associated with bright, fun pastel colors. Bunnies, chicks, and eggs turn up on anything and everything. It is a perfect time for easy and fun kids crafts. And a great crafting project to have your child make is an Easter Basket. This Easter Bunny Basket, however will be a little bit out of the box....or made from a box rather! It is somewhat unusual but its a great way to show case your child's artistic side, and it can store quite a bit of goodies as well!

What you will need to create the basket:

- A carton box, it can be anything from a shoe box to the milk container, however only encourage big ones if you plan to fill them with goodies!

- Some sticks, as well as liquid glue, Elmer's or any other school glue will do the trick.

- Enough of colored paper to cover up the box. Now you can use printer sheets that have drawings, paintings, printouts or what not on them. You can use wrapping paper or magazine pages as well. It is up to you, your child or whatever you have lying around the house.

- Color Markers, crayons might do as well!

- Scissors, either child safe ones or you should monitor your child while using regular ones.

- Some of those glue on googly eyes, the bigger the better!

- At least four pipe cleaners, you can use six as well if you like. They will be used as whiskers.

- A craft pom pom, again the bigger the better.

- A stapler and a hole puncher.


How to create your basket:

- First of all you will have to remove one of the sides to your box by cutting it off. So if you are using a shoe box you can cut the cover off.

- Now depending on what kind of paper you chose (construction, printer, wrapping, etc). cut out pieces to fit on the sides of your box. If you are using wrapping paper its pretty manageable so you can wrap the whole box into it then glue the ends on the inside of the box.

- If you are using either printer paper, construction or magazine cut outs, use the stick glue to cover every side of the box with them, on the outside.

- Choose one side to be the "face". On that side draw eyes, and then glue the googly eyes in the middle of them.

- Punch a hole, positioned accordingly, on the "face" side of the box. This hole will be for the bunny's nose.

- Stick your four (or six) pipe cleaners halfway through the hole. Bend them so there is two (or three) going towards each side of the box, as whiskers would!

- The bend the halves of the pipe cleaners, that are inside the box, against the box side and staple them from inside.

- Now cut out two larger ear shapes (think of a long flower petal) and two smaller ones that would fit inside the big ones. Make sure they are contrasting in colors so you can see the difference.

- Glue the smaller ones over the larger ear pieces.

- Once your ears are done staple them to the inside of the "face" so they are sticking up like bunny ears.

- On the side opposite of the "face" glue the crafts pom pom, this will serve as a bunny tail.

Your box is now done! Feel free to decorate it even further, or get right on filling it up with treats!


Changes and step ups

So this past week I've stepped into the role of the Sports and Recreation Channel steward!! Super excited!
I was a bit overwhelmed at first but I think I'll do OK. I am in need of sub-channel stewards so finding good candidates will take up a lot of my time.
Another thing that is keeping me busy is moving. Or preparations to move in the following months. My family situation is a bit off, but to make it short my husband and I, along with the rest of my family will be moving to Europe.
No not exactly the glam Europe you are thinking of, but to a town on the border of
Croatia and BiH. A lot of people have misconceptions about the whole of Balkans. Yes there was a war there...over 10 years ago.
Anyway the town is not my first choice (I'd much more prefer Belgrade, or Zagreb in the second spot) but it doesn't matter since the place I live at now isn't exactly the most exciting thing ever, I mean cmon it's in Michigan!
So the big upsides to moving are that we will be a lot closer to UK (where my hubby is from and where we would eventually like to end up) which makes everything from documents to travel easier. Also well be closer to all of my family.
Need I even mention the endless vacation possibilities that I can only dream of while in the US?!?!
Also, once we move we will be able to live off of my freelance writing alone! How amazing is that? :)
I am also in process of making a website for my writing but that will take a minute.
Speaking of Freelancer websites you guys should really check out:
Hire A Writer Online



It is a website by Angie Papple Johnston, a friend of mine and a very talented writer. You will find her works in places ranging from Helium to the various Government Press Releases.

HeliumLyoto Machida: What makes him so special?


Improvement

In the past few days I have been so lucky to get the opportunity to be a Sports and Recreation Channel Steward. I am sad to see Dan step off, it will be weird as until now he was the one to turn to for any questions or advice.
At the same time I am super excited to step through this newly opened door and to see what awaits on the other side!
I hope I do a decent job and not screw up too much! :D
Anyway, wish me luck you guys!

Problems concentrating...

 
The writer by =tasteofomi on deviantART

The key to working efficiently online is to minimize your distractions. Whether its at home or at the office, distractions are the killer of efficient work. So before you even start to think about work, turn off all unnecessary accessories such as your TV or any other object that could tempt you away from hard work with relaxation. Something else which can definitely affect how well you work is how tidy your surroundings are, a messy room often leads to a messy mind, so before you start work, take out 10-20 minutes just to clean up your desk and room. Now with all known distractions put aside, you'll want to think about your work, depending on what sort of person you are you'll want to go about it either one of two ways.

The planned approach - If you feel you work better by getting everything thought about before you started you'll want to follow this approach. Grab a piece of paper and write down what you need to do and set yourself goals. For example, every morning you should wake up and have a rough idea in your mind about how much work you have to get done and when you should start doing it. It's always best to set multiple goals for yourself, if you feel the goals are too easy after a couple of days, make them a little harder, try to get more done but being realistic about it at the same time

The unplanned approach - This is my more preferred route of action. Rather than filling your mind with all these things you need to do, just like in the planned approach give yourself a little bit of structure by setting a quota for each day on how much work you have to get done. But unlike the planned approach, don't over think it. I find that I get my best work done when i freestyle it, for example when I write for Helium I write much better when I don't think about what needs to be written instead just write straight from the heart and it hasn't let me down so far.

Now once your deep into your work it will get harder and harder to keep on going with all these potential distractions around, so instead of overworking yourself for a small amount of time then quitting, try to give yourself occasional breaks. Watch a little TV or browse the net for 10-15 minutes, but be sure to regulate yourself. Far too often I have found myself taking a break and get caught up in the moment, and I find myself one hour later not knowing what happened, so be sure to time yourself.

If you can stick to these rules you should be able to complete your days of work online as efficiently as possible, just be sure to avoid distractions at any given costs as they will ruin your entire day!


Ah, now only if I could take my own advice...


So I have, after I don't know how many months, come across my Squidoo lens this morning. I thought this sucker wasn't even approved!
Go figure... o.O
Check it out??
Aloevantage


















Easter Omelette by ~TwyceFDailey on deviantART

Once Easter time has come and gone you are left with a bunch of random plastic Easter eggs. What could you possibly do with them, other than throw them away? You might be surprised as there are a few good uses you can put those plastic Easter eggs to!

An obvious and easiest way to reuse the plastic Easter eggs is to put candy and other small goodies into them as party favors for little kids or just as treats for your own children. If you have a themed kids party they are pretty easy to decorate to match your theme. With a marker, a sticker, and some paints maybe you can transform any old plastic Easter egg into a smiley face, a lion, a football, a Mr. Potato head, a girl or anything else your child might like. It doesn't have to be Easter or some other special occasion for you to give your child a small sweet surprise and put a smile on both your faces.

Another way to put the plastic eggs to use is to get crafty with your kids, friends or by yourself if you please, and make Christmas ornaments with them. To do this you will need paints, some string or ribbon and a bigger needle. First you want to poke a hole on top of your egg so you can draw the string or ribbon, by which it will hang off of the tree, through it. After you have done this decorate it by painting a holiday theme onto it. If you are up for it and crafty enough to do it you can pain the outsides of the plastic Easter eggs with random designs and fit them onto the little light bulbs on the Christmas lights. If this project is done right the results are amazing and those that see them are usually left in ave.

You can spend some extra time with your child while you show them how to make a cute bell out of one of the halves of the plastic Easter egg. Take some string and pull it through the top of the egg as mentioned with Christmas ornaments, but make sure you don't tie it just yet and there is plenty string on either side. Grab a button or a bigger bead (polymer clay beads work great!) tie it to the end of the string which is inside the egg half. Now pull the string out leaving only so much slack for the bead to smack about the inside of the egg when shook but not more. Tie it on the outside end making a loop for holding. There you go, you've got a nifty bell!

Many times we will have rings and small jewelry lying around that we don't have any boxes or storage solutions for. Throwing them into a marked plastic Easter egg is a great way not to lose them, have them damaged or scattered around taking up space. If you feel like going all out you can make them look rather fancy by, once again, decorating them. Anything from markers to stickers to bedazzle goes. A similar use is to put random buttons and other small knickknacks into them.

Plastic Easter eggs have been used as molds before. Whether you are making a candle, soaps, jello or some other sweets, these little plastic eggs are great fun and super easy to use.

Im sure there is plenty more uses for them, however this is it from me!



Eggs by *RetteMichBabe on deviantART

Ever since I can remember, Easter holidays were the time of colored eggs and tons of food. Instead of always buying paints and kits full of sticky, uncleanable messes, my mother started putting the plants and leftovers she found around the house, to use. She eliminated nearly all cost related to decorating the Easter eggs, the use of plastic and artificial dyes (as well as the waste they make) along with making the eggs that we eat more natural and healthier.

As a general rule, if you worry about it staining your fingers or towels it will work good on Easter eggs, so look around your house and your yard... what have you got? A few things you can use:

- Onion skins (both red and yellow, but you will use them separately)

- Beets (canned are OK!)

- Dandelions (the yellow flowers only)

- Orange peel

- Stinging Nettles (many don't find this amusing however, so they use spinach)

- Shredded carrots

- Coffee

- Tea

How to decorate Easter eggs by using any of the above :

- Need:

- Eggs

- Onion peels (or anything else you choose)

- Big pot (enough for your eggs and peels)

- Water

How to:

- Put the onion peels and eggs into water and bring to a boil, basically doing all that you would do to boil the eggs.

- Once your eggs are boiled let them cool before taking them out, by now they should have gotten a nice golden or red color (depending which peels you used).

Tips:

- The more peels or plants you use, the stronger the color. The brown eggs will give off more earthy colors, for example if you use red onion peels on brown eggs they will come out red, whereas the white ones will be pink.

- Before cooking the eggs, grab an old pair of pantyhose, cut it up into pieces big enough to hold an egg. If you do it tighter around the egg and make a few knots all over the place the egg will come up with star like markings.

- You can use interesting looking leaves to leave undyed impressions on the eggs. To do this put the leaf against the egg and use the stocking like above but make only one small knot, try to position it over the leaf. Parsley leaves, for instance create great impressions on Easter eggs.

- You can use herbal tea, such as rosebud, to get pink color on eggs rather than just typical brownish.

- If you take a white crayon or candle (any color) and draw on the eggs before painting them the color wont take where you drew.

- After your eggs have been cooked, painted and cooled off, take a piece of smoked bacon skin (if you don't have this just grab a strip of bacon from the fridge) and rub it over your eggs, this will give them a lovely glow and make them so shiny, but won't leave them very greasy at all.

I don't know about you but whenever I think of stained glass windows the first (and pretty much the only) thing that comes to mind is a church. There is a possibility, however, to turn this traditional look into something modern. How? With vector designs. If you are not sure what this is just Google vector art or vector design under images, cool huh? You can also use deviantart.com as a resource to find a design you like, make sure though that the person is OK with their art being used and reused, most users on deviant art will have "rules" about using their work. Most times you can use it but not for commercial purposes such as reselling it.

Need:

- Clear contact paper (buy it at your local hardware store or online, its pretty inexpensive)

- Print out of the design you want

- Scissors and/or Stanley knife (runs about a buck or two at any store)

- Glass Paints (these come in both opaque and transparent colours, you should choose according to the design you are working with)

- Paint brush/es

- Black permanent marker (thickness according to need)

- Clear gloss spray paint (runs a couple of bucks at the hardware store)

How to:

- Depending on the design you will use, you might want to go to your local photo center and order a custom size print that will fit your window, otherwise your printer will do just fine.

- Cut out the clear contact paper ( make sure it has a clear backing too so you can place it over the design and see through it).

- Place it on top of the design print out (adhesive side down but do not remove the backing!) making sure you align it properly.

- Now, remember when you were a kid and you traced pictures onto the paper? This is exactly what you will do. One way is to trace the outlines with the black permanent marker and then paint the insides, or you can do the outlining with opaque paints and the rest with the translucent ones. Either way first do the outlines of the design and let it dry off completely, this takes about 4 hours more or less, you are welcome to blow dry it to speed up the process.

- Filling in the design will take some precision and patience. You will not need a lot of paint as the contact paper wont absorb it, so take care not to put on too much onto the brush and to have only one layer of paint everywhere. You want to make one way even strokes otherwise it will look messy, streaky and blotchy.

- Let this dry, do not lift up vertically until it is completely dried otherwise some runnage might happen, after spray on a coat of clear gloss spray paint.

- Once the spray paint is dry you are ready to carefully put it up onto the window glass.

There you go now you have a unique and beautiful (but faux..shh!) stained glass window, for just a fraction of the price too!

Tips:

- Another option for a textured look of the outline is instead of using regular paint or markers is to use heavy dimensional fabric paint.

- Have someone help you when applying the film onto the window, don't take all of the backing off at once start with a corner, align it and stick it on then slowly pull the backing while adhering the rest of the film to the window, this minimizes chances of any air bubbles or wrinkles.



technorati

Does anyone have any experience with technorati?
What exactly is the point?
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Using Google AdWords to generate leads

For the today's consumers the world is rapidly shrinking, pretty much anything they can think of is just a credit card and a few key strokes away. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the business owners. They now have to compete with not only their part of town or even state but with the whole world. Many have already found their way to the Internet but have failed to effectively reach their targeted audience...read more. 


Social Networking

Please check out my FB Page (to the left). I have started making it today and am kind of stumped....where do I go from here? Do I just keep adding articles??


I cannot for the life of me to decide whether I want to use blogger or the free wordpress...... I think I might just post simultaneously on both. Sort  of like mirror blogs?
Good? Bad? What do you think?