Social Media Explained

Good morning friends and happy Monday February 6th. Today I would like to explain to you how social media works. Well…  not actually. I am actually just go to post a poster that explains the way very basic way different social medias are used. A friend of mine actually posted a rough version of this on his Facebook. I thought it was a very clever approach  and I wanted to clean it up a bit and add a little interest.

Here is what the original version looked like.

The first thing I did was changed all the social media names to their icons. Most of the icons are well-known enough that the name wasn’t necessary. The next thing I did was lined up all the text so that it started in the same margin. To add a bit of interest I turned the dot at the bottom of the exclamation mark into a donut. This follows the theme throughout the explanations. The last little thing I did was place the text on a scroll. This was to help ‘authenticate’ the document by making it look like the 10 commandments, but with only 9 ‘rules’.

Here is what my finished version looks like.

I urge everyone to retweet this post with the has tag #SME, or like this post in Facebook. You could take my image and create a vintage version and post it on Instagram, or post on Foursquare where you are when you are reading it. Even if you don’t do any of the previous suggestions, I hope that this might brighten your day.

Have a good week.

Inspiration: Phidais Gold’s Paper Toy

Good morning friends and happy Monday January 30th. Today I want to share with you something that has inspired me. I stumbled across Phidais Gold’s paper toy show.

The show took place from May 27th to June 15th at the LAP Gallery in Waltham, MA. I wasn’t able to attend the show to see the paper toys, but their Phidais Gold’s site has a link to view all the paper toys that were featured.

These are a couple of my favourites.

After browsing through the various artists creations, I decided to create my own. I took the template that Phidais Gold provided and decided to create a Kermit the Frog like creation. When I finalize my paper toy I will post it for you all to see.  Until then, I have provided a copy of the paper toy template here, but feel free to visit Phidais Gold’s site to view all the toys they created. They have various other inspiring things on their blog. Go check it out.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great week.

My Monthly Avatars

Good morning friends, happy January 9th, 2012. Today I am going to share with you my goal of creating a monthly avatar. This idea started after I had been shown the Mad Men avatar creator, which can be found here.

I went through the process of creating my own mad men avatar but wanted to make some changes to it. I took the version I created on their website and brought it into Illustrator. Here I recreated it and made the minor adjustments I wanted. Here is what my recreated Mad Men Avatar looks like.

Mad Men Yourself Avatar

The enjoyment created by making this image has caused me to want to continue to create a new avatar for the holidays. Again I modified the Mad Men avatar very slightly to create a happy holidays version. It was at this point that I decided to create an avatar for each month of the year. I have decided to update and showcase each monthly avatar at the top of the side bar on the blog. I will be updating this each month. I also intend to use this avatar for all on my social media sites. If any of you would like to see my avatar doing something or wearing something to celebrate a certain month please feel free to pass that on to me. I would love to hear what people think.

Hope everyone has a great week.

The Value of Etsy

Good morning friends. Today I would like to introduce you to Etsy.com. I was introduced to Etsy a couple of months ago by a good friend of mine who has used it to decorate most of her house. I spent some time going over the details of the site to find out what it is all about. And here is what I have learned so far.

It is a great community of creative people who are buying and selling hand-made art or materials to create art. The site has both a marketplace component and a social component to it.

The marketplace component allows you to browse other people’s shops, or you can set up your own shop, just like ebay, to sell your own handmade creations. If you follow the link below you can visit my own shop.

Scott Toman’s Etsy Shop

The social component of the site has the basic functions of most social sites. You can create circles of friends and communicate via messages, or join a team with similar interest to interact with. Etsy also, includes the ability to tag items in stores as ‘favourites’ to share with your friends. You can also combine items from multiply stores to create a ‘treasury’. These ‘treasuries’ have a theme to them; whether it’s based on colour, material, or function.

Even if you’re not in the market to buy something or you don’t feel you need another social community, Etsy is a great place to browse and gain inspiration for future projects. I know I have had some creative sparks after I have spent some time looking around.

I have just begun to scratch the surface of everything this community has to offer. I suggest that if you are interested in handmade creations this is a great spot to search around.

A “How To Stay Creative” List

Good morning friends. Today, I want to share with you something I came across on the Twitterverse. It is a list of 33 different things to try to help stay creative.

I have gone through this list and circled a few of the items that I live by. I have also crossed off the few items that I find don’t help me much. Personally, I love to combine both 8 and 11. Singing new songs in the shower, brings wonderful new creative ideas and usually some very incorrect lyrics to light.

I would love for you to read through the list and share which items help you become creative, and which ones don’t.