Amour Chaleur » Site updates

Everyone loves candies, do you?

Dayna — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:26:28 +0000

I’ve been so engrossed with fixing this layout that for the first time in weeks, I slept at nearly 4am. I decided a new layout is necessary not because I was bored of the previous one but because I think I need something new to “freshen up” the entire site. This blog hasn’t been very active lately because most of my time had been spent on last minute revisions for the upcoming examinations. I had a few other ideas for the new layout but the “Candy House” idea was my final pick.

New icons

Frequent visitors of my blog would know that I usually don’t change any of the comments design because I’m always at a lack of ideas (okay, I admit I’m lazy). This design is one of the simpler ones without much details. I didn’t have much time on hand to work on this. The entire layout took me about 6 hours and I didn’t do any detailed cross browsers checks either. I did a quick check in Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. It seems all right hence if you notice any issues, please let me know.

Panda King

Regarding this design, I have to admit I’m not a fan of candies or chocolates. Anything sweet is not exactly my cup of tea¹. However, I thought a candy house seems pretty interesting and I’m pretty sure it’s a cosy place to live in. This design is made from lollipops, colourful chocolate M&Ms, strawberries and chocolate sticks, vanilla cream, lots of melted chocolates and my trademark, panda king. No pandas were harm in the process of making this layout. I hope you like it because it’s going to stay till at least April or June.

I’ve also been thinking of ideas for my blogger’s namecard. It’s been on my list of to-do for the past year but I still haven’t started yet. Perhaps I should start jotting down my ideas. What do you think of using this candy design for the namecard? Oh and if both of you are reading this, Terry and Brenda, both of you need to start too! I want one when you are done, okay?

I don’t think pandas like sweet stuff as well

Winners of the Site Glamour Contest

Dayna — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:43:57 +0000

I am pleased to announce the winners of the Site Glamour Contest held over the past few months and the most glamorous site from the list of contestants goes to Lisa of Auberginer. The first runner up goes to Charmaine of Oh-Doll.Net and the second runner up goes to Sy Yuan of Sylistic.Com. Congratulations to the winners! I have contacted you via emails with regards to your prizes.

Winners of the Site Glamour Contest

Auberginer

If you haven’t check out Lisa’s website, Auberginer.Org, you really should. She has some really gorgeous artworks which includes her drawings and pixels.

I really like her latest layout as well. The image links on her layout like the small buttons at the side and the home icon adds a special touch. I especially like the way her website’s name is designed. The entire layout is bright and cheery and of course creative in my opinion.

Once again, I would like to congratulate Lisa for being the winner of the Site Glamour Contest.

Here’s a sneak peek of the illustration for Lisa.

I would also like to express my thanks to all the contestants and sponsors of this contest: City in Surrender, Auberginer, Impatient Mind, TheOutlandish, Jefflion, Miruku no Uta, Kihugs, Rockwitch.net, Culture of Men, Sylistic.com, Oh-Doll.Net, Xivy.Org, Kandiberst.com, Thismemory.Net, Skipaheartbeat.Com, Bouncy-Bubbles.Net, Onemoreline.Net, Mystical Crush and Love Dares.

The contest would not be possible without your participation. Thank you!

Amour Chaleur turns one

Dayna — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:00:25 +0000

8th December marks the day Amour Chaleur turns one and today is the big day! This is actually the first time I’m “celebrating” the birthday of my website or even remember the date the site was started mainly because Amour Chaleur is my first domain. My previous websites, Confession and Liberta were hosted via subdomains. I seriously cannot remember why I wanted my own domain back in December 2008. Is it because I miss blogging? Well, maybe.

To cut it short, this day is extremely significant as Amour Chaleur is a totally new beginning for me. It brings me to where I am today. I started drawing illustration because of this site and it’s been a year since I’m blogging again. I hope I wouldn’t play the MIA game again in the future and let me present Bim Bim celebrating with his huge cake. I hope he grows taller so he doesn’t need the chair next year.

Thank you Chervalier for this gift

Thanks for all the birthday wishes on Twitter.

On a side note, I added a bit of green to the footer to spice things up a bit. It seems dull and boring without anything there. I’ll also be heading to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Thursday for a short getaway trip and will be back only on Sunday. It’s nice to be away from Singapore once in a while and I hope I get to do some Christmas shopping there. Stay tune for the second giveaway when I’m back, I assured you it’ll be a blast!

New layout for Christmas – Zoo Mania

Dayna — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:17:32 +0000

To celebrate Christmas this season, I have launched a new layout – Zoo Mania. I wasn’t lazy this time and drew the illustration from scratch in Photoshop. Perhaps this is to make up for the previous layout where I dump everything from my old layouts together. Zoo Mania took me around 4 hours to draw the illustration and another 4 hours to code it. Did I mention how much I dislike coding layouts? Drawing is a really enjoyable process but coding is totally the opposite. The debugging process is a headache as well.

Even though you can’t see major changes in the style, I did changed the header styles. I left the comments, page navigation and footer untouched because I like it as it is now. I swear I wasn’t trying to be lazy. Before I introduce the main characters of this layout, I would like to thank Scholar for giving me constructive criticism and advice on how to improve this illustration.

Edit on 24 November: I ended up editing the minor style details like the page navigation, read more links, comments navigation and the footer etc because I feel that the previous styles didn’t really match the new theme. It’s more colourful now and looks like a new theme.

Let the introduction begins… …

The Zoo Mania Team

I actually like this layout. It’s been some time since I draw in Photoshop and I really enjoyed the time spend on this. I hope you like it as much as I do.

I’m still alive

Dayna — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:45:23 +0000

I’m still alive and kicking in case anyone though I’ve gone missing. I’m extremely slow in replying to emails these days because I’m busy catching up with my “offline” life. I faced my computer nearly 24 hours a day except when I’m in school. My dad even told me I could just get married to the computer. Of course I’m not going to do that. Chewy wouldn’t like that. Chewy came over for dinner and he waited 3 hours while I messed around with the new navigation today (yes, there’s a new design, did you not noticed it?). Hence, I promise I will spend my entire Wednesday with him!

Mini layout redesign

Speaking of the redesign, I redid both the main and footer navigation and added new panda prints to the footer. I noticed I’ve been using rounded corners for my layouts since last December and thus I removed all the round corners as well. Check out the new post meta at the end of every post if you have not. I’ve also switched to a new plugin for sharing posts and redesign (again!) the list of tags, related and popular posts. In addition, I make a small change to the background of the header, no more fluffy white clouds now and it’s a lot less cluttered. Phew! Yes, that’s all the updates I’ve in regards to the layout.

Voting for the Site Glamour Contest has closed and all the articles written by the wonderful participants have been published here. Please feel free to leave any comments or join in the discussion.

New header? It’s the Bim Bim Remix

Dayna — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:20:48 +0000

I was playing with my Photoshop the entire afternoon experimenting with typography. I have never been too bothered about the use of fonts on my website. However, I was inspired to try out something new after seeing some fantastic examples of typographical illustrations by other web designers. The Bim Bim Remix is what I’ve come up with! I’ve only changed the header so the rest of the layout looks exactly the same. I put up a poll on twitter and it’s 9 votes for Bim Bim remix and 3 votes for the previous monster layout. Sorry to all the lovers of the monster layout. Bim Bim Remix wins this round!

A storm is brewing

Dayna — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:25:01 +0000

The wind woke me up at about 7.30 in the morning yesterday. My room was surprising dark and hence I jump out of bed to see this …

The first 2 photos were taken during sunrise and the rest were taken slightly after. I’m assuming those “grey things” in the first 2 photographs are the dark clouds. I have never seen anything like those before yesterday so I thought I’ll share. Anyway, it was the right weather to be in bed so I went back to sleep after snapping those.

On a side note, I redid the design for the comments, breadcrumb navigation and finally put my library back online. I have done cross browsers checks for the comments design thus it should shows up correctly in the latest browsers. If anything is look wonky, please let me know. Tell me what you think of the new design as well, hope you like it! I was going to stick with the design from the Dear Diary layout but after a week, I realised that the comments doesn’t really match this new layout.

Let me just do a short advertisement for the Site Glamour Contest. We currently have 13 participants and a few more sponsors will be added shortly. I’m hoping to have a few more participants so please do check out the contest page and join us for a chance to win some wonderful prizes.

Invasion of the unknown!

Dayna — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:39:51 +0000

Surprise! I made this new layout during the past 24 hours, it was inspired by Oridusartic. My twitter followers might have noticed my tweets about this new layout. I don’t usually changed my layout this often but I’ve noticed a few sites with very similar designs to my previous Scrapbook layout. Hence, I decided to draw a new one yesterday. I feel honoured that someone thinks mine is good enough to be duplicated though. I might be using this design for my name cards as well, maybe replacing the devil with my trademark panda, we shall see.

So, why monsters? (Yes, it’s a monster or devil, not a cow, pig, bee or panda) I saw a tweet from Oridusartic with a link to a list of adorable monsters and I decided to try drawing something new. I’ve never drawn a monster before and let me tell you it’s super tough to draw a cute monster. The one in this layout – Blurry is not exactly adorable either. It’s my best shot though. It was without wings initially. Here are some of the different types of wings I’ve drawn for him.

Wings wings and more wings

It has a Chirstmasy feeling, no? The background isn’t very logical as well with lollipops growing on the grass. It’s suppose to be snowing as well. Nevertheless, like what Oridusartic had told me – anything can happen in “our world”. I’m still using the tab navigation style but I flip the words over so that it’s easier to read now. If you look around the website, I didn’t change all of the styles (eg. headers). I still like the old ones, plus I couldn’t think of a better one … yet. I still maintain the notebook style because of the same reason – I still like it.

I would like to express my thanks to Oridusartic, Terry, Liling, Chewy and Huaian for comments and advice before I launched the final layout. Credit for the post title goes to James! This layout is extremely random. I’ve no explanations as to why it is snowing when the grass is green. Why are lollipops all over the ground? Why are there shadows when there is no sun?

I have also done cross browser checks on Firefox 3.5.3, Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome 3, Safari 4.0.2 and Opera 10. It should most probably work in the latest browsers and in resolutions of 1024×768 and above. A JavaScript enabled browser is recommended.

Goodbye Bim Bim, Hello to me!

Dayna — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:40:55 +0000

I have finally managed to finish this new layout. Bim Bim shall be missed but I hope you would like the new one as well. This layout was named as “Dear Diary”, the reason is pretty obvious I guess. This layout was designed into a notebook/diary. The merry-go-round was actually a separate illustration that wasn’t meant for this layout but since I like it a lot, I thought why not just put it in as well. This diary has a bit of a scrapbook style as well. I love lace! The little tabs on the right are the navigation. The photo strips on the left are those taken during my 21st birthday. Check out my flickr for more photos.

I know this layout is very pinkish but it’s in my favourite colour. With all the ribbons and lace, I doubt any guys will like this layout but it screams “Dayna” on the entire layout. Dear Diary is the Nth version of the new layout. I have been having a serious case of layout block since the end of my UOL exams so I kept redoing it. It was until 3 days ago I suddenly of this idea of having my online journal looking like a real life diary.

Version N - 1

Merry-go-round

I have done cross browser checks on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera but I’m not sure if it works across all browsers though, it should work in the latest browsers and in resolutions of 1024×768 and above.

Things to do

~~Update 2 WordPress plugins~~ Completed!
Replies to all the 50 over emails in regard to Amour Chaleur
Finish half of the reviews in the queue by the end of this month
~~Draw a small bee to link my Quilting Bee Quilt in the footer~~ Completed!
Find a spot on the layout to put my twitter updates?
Update information about me

I shall do an entry on my birthday in the next few days. Hope everyone like this layout!

Undergoing maintenance and upgrade

Dayna — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:34:59 +0000

Amour Chaleur is undergoing a layout change and WordPress upgrade at the moment. It may take up to a few hours so please ignore any errors. Thanks.