August Empress

Nice finds from around the web:

1. Readmill – A community of readers, highlighting and sharing the books they love (and a gorgeous iPad app)

2. Sneakpeekit – Printable and PSD sketch sheets for web designers.

3. 100 Days - Sharing the stories of designers who do what they love.

4. Nicole’s Classes – A selection of free Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials.

5. Teagan White – An amazing illustrator with a beautiful website.

6. Brown Paper – Bespoke stationery, need I say more.

7. Cupcake Ipsum – Sugar-coated lorem ipsum generator, to add some sweetness to your fill in text.

8. Serifs and Sans – Minimal, modern and typographic design inspiration blog.

Lovely mentions and links to August Empress:

A Simple Kind of Life – Blog Crushes

Going Home to Roost – 10 Latest Loves

Dream Delight Inspire – Currently Loving

Roots of She – Tribe Love

Bold Goods – Blogging Tool: Powerpoint

Lolalina – Surprise: Come See Lolalina’s New Look

Yoga with Nadine – Three cool resources for prettifying your blog

Little Pink Strawberries – July Wrap Up

One of the greatest sources of inspiration is the environment around you. I am inviting you to join me in a fun little project using our favourite app Instagram, to take photos of beautiful patterns you find. It can be in your home, office, your backyard, your city – whether it be created by a designer or by mother nature. Simply add the hashtag #thepatternparty to your photos, and they will all appear on the Instagram Pattern Party page! (It can take up to 30 minutes for your image to show up).

You can also follow me on Instagram at thedarlingtree.

Here’s a little inspiration:

By justinguyer

By kx3imberr

By teatreevintage

By susannahconway

By nailz_and_fashion

So get Instagramming and check out everyone’s photos too.

A Furoshiki is a type of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth that can have multiple uses as a scarf, a table cloth, for gift wrapping or bundling, or even converted into a carry bag. Each of these wraps has been produced as a collaboration of the LINK collective and designers from around the world, and are hand printed in Japan.

The patterns featured above include the Folded Paper and Red Stripe designed by Lucinda Newton Dunn, and the Maze, Cinnabar and Navy by Hannah Waldron.

Beginning on the 8th of October I will be running the next Your Darling Blog design workshop, and I am beyond excited to be giving away one scholarship to Your Darling Blog which includes the workshop & 3 weeks of feedback on your design!

This is a great opportunity for blogger’s to create their own blog design, learn lots of new skills and be inspired.

Your Darling Blog is for bloggers who want to infuse more of their personality into their online space. Over 7 weeks I’ll be teaching you how to create a blog design that expresses who you are, including:

• Access to a private blog and daily posts delivered to your inbox
• Tutorials demonstrating various design styles and techniques
• Step-by-step process of designing 3 unique blog designs
• Creative lessons and assignments to craft your brand and inspire your blog design
• Private Flickr group to share your work and connect with others
• Shared insight from a selection of talented web designers
• An extensive collection of examples, inspiration and resources
• 3 weeks of individual emails with me to get feedback on your work

Be sure to read the lovely testimonials from past students.

To be in the running to win a Your Darling Blog Scholarship, you must complete these three steps:

1. Create a blog post explaining why you want or need to participate in the next Your Darling Blog workshop. Your post must include a link to the Your Darling Blog Website. Please also leave a link to your post in the comments below.

2. Tweet about your post, this giveaway post, or about the workshop on Twitter, including the handle @yourdarlingblog.

3. Sign up to the Your Darling Blog Mailing List (if you are already signed up to this list, you can skip this step).

This giveaway is open to anyone worldwide and will close on 24th August ,2012. I will read all entries and select a winner to be announced on the 27th August, 2012. I repeat, all three steps listed above must be completed to be eligible to win. The giveaway is valued at $295 AUD.

I wish you the best of luck and I can’t wait to spend the next workshop with one of you!

Update: I’ve created a little download of design elements you can use in your blog post.

Update: This giveaway has now closed, good luck everyone!

There’s a new lovely little online shop on the scene and it’s name is Papercookie! Owner Leonie Cheung and her husband Simon offer a carefully selected range of independently designed paper goods and unique products for the home and office, including some of my favourite brands and designers: Rifle Paper, Shanna Murray, Knot & Bow, Elm Paper and O-Check.

I know all of you are the same as me and can’t get enough of gorgeous stationery and products so take a peek! They are based in Australia but the good news is they ship worldwide.

Happy hump day! My goodness, I just realised my last post was dated 3 weeks ago! I’m sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately while focusing on the current workshop and working on some changes around my business, all exciting stuff but I won’t leave it so long until the next post, I promise.

Today I really wanted to share with you some more handy WordPress resources and plugins, there’s so much you can do with WordPress and these are just a few that will make your site more flexible or improve your WP development skills.

Instapress – Highly customizable plugin to embed your feed from Instagram.

Advanced Custom Fields – The possibilities are endless in customising your site with this incredible plugin.

Building WordPress Themes from Scratch – Written by Joe Casabona, learn everything you need to know in taking your HTML/CSS files into a WordPress theme.

Create a Responsive, Mobile-First WordPress Theme – Written by Ellen Bauer for Smashing Magazine.

WordCamp – Attend a WordPress conference in your city!

Custom Sidebars – If you need to show different sidebar items on different pages, this little plugin is there for you.

Client Orientated WP Development – Improve your development process for client’s projects, created by Jonathan Christopher.

Price Table Plugin – The quickest way to share your price offerings in a clean and minimal table.

WP Snippets – Code snippets for WordPress developers.

Recipe Plugin – The best way for food bloggers to easily manage and showcase their recipes.

Pretty Link – Create shortlinks coming from your own domain.

Please know that I am not affiliated with any of these links. Photo and image by me.

Four words. Four gorgeous large prints from Swedish designer Ylva Skarp.

I do love when great design features a hand drawn aesthetic, particularly to create gorgeous typography like the collection below. Enjoy!

Designed by Sarah Thorne for Topshop.

Designed by PTARMAK for Handsome Coffee. Photo by DJ Murdock.

Design by Pearlfisher for JME (Jamie Oliver).

Designed by Ali LaBelle for LaBelle Famille.

Designed by Ryan Feerer for Betty & June.

Designed by Brandever and Dana Tanamachi for Nagging Doubt.

Designed by Jillian Barthold for Chile Beach Jams.

Designed by Hardhat Design for Coffee Supreme.