Motivational Words Encouraging a Positive Attitude Print

A gorgeous best-selling design. Click to customize or personalize. How would it look with your name or monogram on it - why not have a look-see right now?

Motivational Words Encouraging a Positive Attitude Print

tagged with: motivational words, motivation, positive thinking, positive attitude, encouragement, encouraging, resolution, new years, encourage values, hrbstslr mowds9, positive outlook, word art

Motivational Words Being positive and achieving goals! Here's a great design using motivational word-art. Chosen especially for sustaining New Years Resolutions. Each time you look at them, you should get a subtle positive boost!
more items featuring these motivational words
more items in the Motivational Words series
image code: mowds9

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Cute Puppy Dog Paw Prints Tan Black Coffee Mug

Cute Alert!

How can you resist this cute puppy design? Maybe you'd like to see your name or initials on it? Click to customize and personalize...

Cute Puppy Dog Paw Prints Tan Black Coffee Mug

tagged with: gifts for dog lovers, dog, dogs, pets, paw print, paw prints, paw print design, puppies, doggie, dogs rule, dog owners, dog business, animals, animal lovers

This design is covered in Cute Puppy Dog Paw Prints in Tan and Black. Makes a great gift for any dog lover.

"gifts for dog lovers" "dog" "dogs" "pets" "paw print" "paw prints" "paw print design" "puppies" "doggie" "dogs rule" "dog owners" "dog business" "animals" "animal lovers"

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Valley of Dolls: A Bizarre Town in Japan Where an Artist is Replacing Departed Residents with Life-Size Dolls

Fun and Random

Photo by horiyan

This is one of those things you might never believe if somebody told you, and yet even when faced with the evidence in photos, video, or Google Maps, you find yourself questioning reality (and maybe shaking off a serious case of the heebie jeebies). Welcome to Nagoro, a small village tucked into the valleys of Shikoku, Japan, a place where old residents are being replaced by life-sized dolls.

The work is part of a project by longtime resident and artist Ayano Tsukimi who returned to the village after an 11-year absence to discover many of her old neighbors and friends had left for larger cities or simply passed away. The town itself is dying with a dwindling population of about 35 people.

While gardening one day, Tsukimi constructed a scarecrow in the image of her father and was suddenly struck with the idea to replace other friends and family members with similar dolls. Over 350 dolls and 10 years later, her work continues. She places each doll in a place she feels is important to the memory of that person, so strolling through the down you might discover these inanimate memorials working in fields, fishing in rivers, or passing time in chairs along the road.

Berlin-based filmmaker Fritz Schumann recently visited with the 64-year-old artist and shot the documentary short above. (via Dan Sinker, The Verge)

 
#funandrandom 
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Finding Readers Week: Mrs Woog’s Tips to Create Conversations on Your Blog

Blogging with purpose

original post »

Day two of our Finding Readers week is successful Australian blogger Mrs Woog of Woogsworld. With a thriving Facebook community and a comment section that makes the rest of us green with envy, she’s learned a thing or two in her time. Here she spills all…

Engagement. Not just diamond rings mind you, but getting people together and talking. In the world of social media, engagement is everything. After all, if a blog posts falls in cyberspace and no one is there to read it… (Insert something profound here…)

There are several things that you can easily do to increase your engagement across the social media platforms that you use. It might be your blog, Facebook, Twitter or a combination of all three. I am pleased as punch to be able to share my knowledge with you, and hopefully, if you find my advice useful for your particular genre, you can see your engagement soar!

What is important to remember when creating content if you want repeat readers:

Voice – Well it is the big one, no? With so many writers and bloggers seeking to grow their readership, you voice needs to be clear, consistent and above all else, your own. The thing about SM is that there is a readership of your own out there; you just need to give them a reason to swing by.

I am coming from this as a personal blogger, which I think is the hardest niche to try and carve out. I write the way that I talk. It is just that simple. I write about mundane topics that people can relate to. I keep things light, fast and hopefully people can get a giggle or take something away from my posts. So, practice, practice, practice and the best way to do this, is consistency. Writing is like a muscle in a way. The more you use it and do it, the stronger your words will be.

 

 

Readers like to feel like that they are a part of a social group. One of the things I have noticed lately is the interaction that readers are having with each other. It makes me feel like I am hosting one great big Cyber-Party. I start the conversations and then watch them develop. It is a truly delightful situation. And of course there is always going to be one nob that wants to crash the party, but they are shown the door quickly and with minimal fuss.

And a small spank on the bottom.

It is the facilitation of these conversations that will give you a really great insight into who your readers actually are. It is this information that will help you to work out what sort of content to deliver to them. What will work, and what will sink.

I call writing a post that gets no comments, “DELIVERING A DOUGHNUT” which means a big fat zero when it comes to interaction. Happens to everyone. I just move on, like the Soup Nazi…. NEXT!

 

 

It is not always possible, interact with your “guests” as much as you would like to. If someone takes the time to email you, reply to him or her. If someone takes the time to comment, try and acknowledge their involvement. Depending on where you are in your blogging life, this will vary. I like to make time during the day to do it – 15 minutes here and there. Treat every reader with respect.

And please don’t be chicken shit when it comes to discussing the big issues. 

Why, it’s the three P’s!

PARENTING
POLITICS
PHILOSOPHY

Have an opinion and share it. Present your case and back it up with facts. It is the single most immediate way to drive up the engagement on your blog. It is not about arguing, but people want to share their point of view and you are providing the platform to do so. Plus it is fun! I am always prepared to be proven wrong. Try it!

 

 

My social media playground is the blog, Twitter and Facebook, and I approach these very differently. It was not something that I consciously set out to do, but on reflection it is just the way it turned out.

Facebook for your blog? Everyone has one, and if you don’t, you should.

Why? Because it is the best WORD OF MOUTH was to get your blog onto people’s screens. Because it is the easiest way to get your content shared. Because it is fun and interactive. Just because, ok?

My first post on my facebook page?

 My blog is my-free-for-all cocktail party and my Facebook Page is my “Drinks with the Gals” night. People choose to be a part of it. It is inclusive and respectful and we all have a good old laugh. Sure, there are the occasional biffos, but that happens in any social group, no?

And then there is Twitter, or as I like to call it, the seedy backroom bar of some dodgy pub. Fast, fun and fancy free, you need to keep your wits about you on this popular, but sometimes much maligned social media platform. Make one mistake, and you can be taken out by faceless trolls (Just ask my friend Tracey Spicer!) but as quickly as things can flare up, they die away.

So my top 3 tips for increasing the engagement on your social media platforms?

1. Make a spelling mistake. People LOVE to point them out to you.
2. Tell people you think vaccinations are the devils work.
3. Write a blog post about how you are over blogging and are thinking about quitting.

What’s that? You want serious tips? Fine.

1. Be around. Dedicate time to write and share and promote and respond. Be consistent.
2. Give them content that is worth reading. Ask yourself, what are they getting out of this post? Give them a reason to come back and get involved in the online world that you have created, and reward their loyalty with fantastic (and varied) content.
3. Be brave. A dog never barked at a parked car.

 What are your tips? Does Facebook work for you?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Finding Readers Week: Mrs Woog’s Tips to Create Conversations on Your Blog

Finding Readers Week: Mrs Woog’s Tips to Create Conversations on Your Blog
 #bloggingtips 

Jaw-Dropping Pen and Ink Cityscapes That Seem to Sprawl into Infinity by Ben Sack

Fun and Random

A Single Note / 48″ diameter, 150″ (12.5 feet) circumference

A Single Note, detail

A Single Note, detail

A Single Note, detail

A Single Note, detail

A Single Note, detail

A Single Note, detail

With meticulous determination and a steady hand, artist Ben Sack picks up a black 0.05 Staedtler pigment liner pen and begins to draw the dense, intricate details of fictional cityscapes: buildings, roads, rivers and bridges. He draws until the ink runs out and picks up another pen. And another. And another. Sapping the ink from dozens of writing utensils until several months later a canvas is complete. His most recent piece, a vast circular drawing titled A Single Note (top), has a 12.5 foot circumference. It staggers the mind.

The architecture found in Sack’s artwork spans centuries, from gothic cathedrals to towering skyscrapers, underpinned by patterns of urban sprawl reminiscent of European cities with a healthy dose of science fiction. If you look carefully you might even recognize a familiar landmark here and there. He shares as his influence some thoughts on “western antiquity”:

Its this sort of image that I think most people, if not all of society have of western antiquity; stainless marble facades, long triumphal avenues, monuments to glory. In actuality, the cities of the past were far from idealistic by todays standards. Yes there was marble, lots of marble, and monuments galore, however these urban centers were huddled together and unless you were considerably wealthy, life in dreamy antiquity was often a heroic struggle. Though the societies of antiquity were bloody, dirty and corrupt the idea of antiquity has come to represent some resounding ideals in present society; democracy, justice, law and order, balance, symmetry. These ideals are now the foundation stones of our own civilization, a civilization that some distant future will perhaps honor as antiquity.

Sack graduated from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011 and has since had work numerous solo a group exhibitions, most recently at Ghostprint Gallery. And just this week he returned from a circumnavigation of the globe as part of a residence aboard the m/s Amsterdam. You can see more of his work on his website, and over on Tumblr. Prints are available here. (via Waxy.org, Laughing Squid)

 
#funandrandom 
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