Monday 28 May 2012

When is a free blog not a free blog?

Free Clipart Picture of Smiley Face Sun. Click Here to Get Free Images at Clipart Guide.comAnswer: when you've been a busy little blogger and filled it with too many photos - more on that in a second.

Hi all, well I think I gave you the wrong impression when I said I 'had the builders in' on my blog, I didn't have major changes planned - I did that a few weeks ago with my blog makeover. No, I was getting to grips with how photos on our blogs are stored in cyberspace and from there set about reorganising my albums. I deleted a lot of stuff in error so there were big black squares all over my blog while I tracked down the correct photos to replace the voids - didn't look very nice! I did move a few things round and tidied up a bit though, so maybe i should have said I had the de-clutterers and Feng Shui peeps in. I was intending to make this blog post before now but got ill again so it's taken a while to let you know the builders have left now.

Anyway, after reading Mel's panicked post about messages she was getting saying that she'd used up all her storage space for a free blog and was being asked to pay for more storage (what the???) I had a look at the way it works when we put photos on our blogs, our free blogs. Turns out, they are only free up to a point. Photos we put on our blogs are stored at Picasa Web Albums and there is a limit to how much we can store - 1GB - and after that we have to pay, yes pay!! a couple of quid a month. 1GB is probably plenty for many bloggers but for us crafters the photos are pretty essential to our posts and a gigabyte won't go so far. 

Sounds worrying, but I did a bit of looking around and found out some useful bits which I've put here in case this is new to anyone else. It's a bit long, so I've broken it up into segments.


Saturday 19 May 2012

Please excuse my appearance....

Royalty-free image from freedigitalimages.net
Please excuse the appearance of parts of my blog -
I have the builders in!

In other words.....I'm tinkering LOL.


Saturday 12 May 2012

"Error 503 - Service Unavailable"

So I'm trying to visit blogs and keep getting an almost blank white screen with the same old message:

Service Unavailable
Error 503


Does anyone else get this when you try to visit a blog? It's been happening a lot to me for the last couple of months, and I assume it's to do with the code for the new Blogger interface (don't you love it when they "improve" things?) 

Anyway, I've found that if you simply refresh the page, the blog will load fine. Bit annoying to have to keep doing this but at least there is a way round the problem.

Hope you like the little clip art piccie, it's how the computer makes me feel sometimes, lol. Feel free to save it and use it if you like it, it's free from clker.com

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Edit: I've been getting this error message as I've been leaving comments too but the comment still gets published. Just click your 'Back' button to get the blog to display again, and then refresh.....your comment should now be displaying.

What a palaver! I suppose they'll never fix it grrrrrrrrr. Have a good weekend all.


Monday 7 May 2012

Things With Wings at Sundays With Crissy

Hi everyone, I hope all those in the UK are enjoying their Bank Holiday Monday - I notice we have typical Bank Holiday weather, lol. Don't worry, there's another Holiday at the end of the month to look forward to.

Today I have a card that I made for our challenge this month at Sundays With Crissy. The theme is Things With Wings, so that could mean birds, butterflies, airplanes, or anything else you can think of, as long as it has some wings it will be perfect.

I chose to use this gorgeous digi image by Crissy called Rose Butterfly, which I coloured with copic markers. I went for an overall colour scheme of purple and white, which are 2 colours I just love together, so I searched through my stash of papers and found 2 very old packs by Paper Cellar and Papermania with some nice papers in the right shades. A square doily and some leafy diecuts provide the white to go with my purples.  No extra embellishments on this card, so just a little stitching around the inner mat finishes it off.


I'd like to enter this is these challenges:
2 Sisters - Anything Goes
A & T/Emerald Faeries - Anything Goes
Anything Goes Challenge - Things With Wings
Aud Sentiments - Anything Goes
Crafts & Me - Favourite Colour Combo
Crafty Calender - Things With Wings
Great Impressions - Anything Goes
Just Traceys - Anything Goes
Oldie But A Goodie - Diecuts & punches (leaf die cuts plus papers which are way over 6 months old)
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes


Hope you like my card today.....if you want to join in the challenge you have till the end of the month to upload your entry. Happy crafting!