Saturday 10 January 2015

Monograms on rich decorative frame for Couple Paper Napkin

Featured Product!

A gorgeous design. Click to customize and personalize. Maybe you'd like to see your name or initials on it?


tagged with: elegance, rdf1, monogram initials, couples initials, rich reds, elegant monograms, golden browns, decorative frame, swirly style, hrfptraz

Elegance series A gorgeous and elegant design made to hold a couple's or individual's monogram initials. The frame is decorative and contrast beautifully with the background that's rendered in deep, rich reds and golden browns. Perfect for the newly engaged or married or just as personal statement to enrich the home.
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image code: rdf1

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Stellar Nursery R136 in the Tarantula Nebula Wristlet Purse

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?


tagged with: galaxies, astronomy, stellar nursery, 30 doradus nebula, massive stars, hrbstslr dorneblmc, amazing hubble images, tarantula nebula, cosmological stars, cosmological, r136, large magellanic cloud, star cluster

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds in appear in this the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus (or Tarantula) Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years. The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years.
The movement of the LMC around the Milky Way may have triggered the massive cluster's formation in several ways. The gravitational tug of the Milky Way and the companion Small Magellanic Cloud may have compressed gas in the LMC. Also, the pressure resulting from the LMC plowing through the Milky Way's halo may have compressed gas in the satellite. The cluster is a rare, nearby example of the many super star clusters that formed in the distant, early universe, when star birth and galaxy interactions were more frequent.
The LMC is located 170,000 light-years away and is a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, which also includes the Milky Way. The Hubble observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

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more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

image code: dorneblmc

Image credit: Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3

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Get Well Soon - Stellar Group, Tarantula Nebula Cards

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?


tagged with: astronomy, get well soon, speedy recovery, hurry home, stellar nursery, r136, tarantula nebula, amazing hubble images, star galaxies, hrbstslr dorneblmc, massive stars, large magellanic cloud, star cluster, 30 doradus nebula

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds in appear in this the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus (or Tarantula) Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years. The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years.
The movement of the LMC around the Milky Way may have triggered the massive cluster's formation in several ways. The gravitational tug of the Milky Way and the companion Small Magellanic Cloud may have compressed gas in the LMC. Also, the pressure resulting from the LMC plowing through the Milky Way's halo may have compressed gas in the satellite. The cluster is a rare, nearby example of the many super star clusters that formed in the distant, early universe, when star birth and galaxy interactions were more frequent.
The LMC is located 170,000 light-years away and is a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, which also includes the Milky Way. The Hubble observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.
more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

image code: dorneblmc

Image credit: Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this

Cute Christmas Havanese Puppy Dog Postage Stamps

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...


tagged with: adorable, animal, attractive, babe, baby, beautiful, bichon, black, camera, cap, card, charming, christmas, claus, cool, cushion, cute, dog, facing, friend, friendly, front, funny, greeting, hat, havanais, havanese, holiday, infant, isolated, lie-abed, longhair, looking, lovely, lying, male, mini, nice, pet, playful, portrait, puppy, red, reddish, santa, small, studio, sweet, tassel, white, xmas, young

Cute Bichon Havanese puppy dog in Christmas - Santa hat is lying on a red cushion. Isolated on a white background © and ® Bigstock® - All Rights Reserved.

»visit the happyholidays store for more designs and products like this
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New Meticulously Cut Paper Illustrations by Maude White

Fun and Random

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New York-based artist Maude White (previously) continues to create beautifully rendered illustrations with cut paper, creating dozens of new pieces since we explored her work this summer. White relies heavily on thin lines and negative space to create each illustration, a subtractive process with no room for error; a single bad cut could be fatal to a piece. Her latest series titled What’s Left on the Farm involves portraits of women with objects in their hair.

White currently has work in an exhibition at Peter & Mary Ann Vogt Gallery in Buffalo, and you can read a recent interview with her over on Artvoice. (via Hi-Fructose)

 
#funandrandom 
 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/colossal/~3/dIRrr2oA6ZQ/

Zazzle product grid content: Dynamic V Static - an evaluation

I recently had some correspondence with a fellow Zazzler about promoting. He's just starting to feel his way into a more business-focused approach and taking seriously the promoting of his Zazzle store and products.

Our back and forth turned to a discussion around the pros and cons of static and dynamic (feed generated) content.

I hunted around for an example of a site using dynamically created content from Zazzle and found this really gorgeous site called ButterflysAreBlooming. Please have a look, not only for the lovely designs but so I've got somewhere to use as an example for my comparison.

What am I comparing this against? Well, I've got a bee in my bonnet about the new Personalization Panel feature of SeeMyBest Pro. This is partly because of the amazing "stickiness" you get on the pages / blog posts you can get from it. By Stickiness, I mean that people end up spending time interacting with the page and tend to like coming back. Here's the example of a static content page, the one I'll be using as I compare (the personalization panel and product grid are what was created by SMB Pro, I just pasted the html it gave me).

In the end, I conclude that a mix of both dynamic and static is probably best.

In this comparison, I'm ignoring how 'pretty' both are, and am just looking at the various benefits and dis-benefits of the two approaches. My day job is as a business analyst and this would be how I would tackle it with that "hat" on.

Dynamic web pages

http://butterflysareblooming.com/
ButterflysAreBlooming

  • Debra's ButterflysAreBlooming site (and similar sites such as those built with the Zazzle Store Builder - ZSB). This uses what is known as a "feed-driven" product grid.
    1. Dynamic product grid used (feed-driven). Different products may be shown next visit because of popularity etc changes. Prices shown are always correct.
    2. Great product zoom feature (doesn't work on mobile),
    3. Ability to move easily to next page of displayed products
    4. The fact that Debra doesn't show product titles is a choice she made, so ignore their absence. Doesn't really matter because the search engine spiders have real trouble munching on feeds right now (and this will likely continue for years - they have no real incentive to do anything about it because, being a feed it MUST just duplicate what's elsewhere.)
    5. No tracking codes - feeds don't give you them "out of the box". You have to write code to add them. Downside is that without tracking codes you can't measure successes (dreadful place to be from the perspective of promoting. Imagine going to your marketing boss and s/he says "Right, you had a budget of 40 hours to spend. Did you spend it wisely or do I need to sack you and get someone who can?" And you say "Dunno, I didn't track any sales". Will you have a job tomorrow? No and no need to guess why!
      All us Zazzlers run businesses. The serious ones apply business principles as best they can in a continuous improvement cycle. The non-serious ones don't and fall by the wayside sooner or later.
    6. Suffers from people who spam their product tags and descriptions (feeds from the Z market place (i.e. not a named store) that are based on searches can be fooled by such tag/description spammers and you can end up with inappropriate stuff being displayed - not always a downside, I guess, but I don't like it.)

Static Web Pages

http://www.kdl.to/departments/fashion%20accessories/monogrammed%20wristlet%20clutch%20bags.html
Karmani Designer Lifestyle - Monogram Wristlet Clutch Bags

  • SeeMyBest Pro's approach (product grid with personalisation panel)
    1. Static pages (if it's specifc to SMB Pro's output, I'll say so)
      • Prices, if you choose to show them, won't update
        - though when you Pin on Pinterest the Rich Pin aspect of SMB Pro's output ensures Pinterest shows the right price, even if you choose not to show them in your product grid
      • Great for the search engine spiders who have no trouble reading the product titles (and descriptions, if you choose to show them (config option in SMB Pro)
        • lots of lovely, yummy food to slurp up
        • they can't deduce it's a duplicate of what's elsewhere like they can with feed-driven content, so your page gets some SEO benefit.
        • I know this because, with static pages, I get to use Google Analytics and see people who have searched on Google, Bing and others coming to my pages.
      • Huge advantage of SMB Pro's static product grid - behind the scenes, all products use a thing called schema.org product markup (I have to do that to make the Pinterest pins "rich"). Google, Bing etc. love schema.org markup because it helps their spiders "understand" the product info on the page
      • The downside is static pages don't ever change unless you take manual action.
        • Rubbish for iPhone etc cases over a long period. This is because new models will come in and, unless you do something about it, they won't appear in your product grid.
        • There's no real harm, though, as they can just drift to the bottom of search engine results - the page will still get some long-tail results (few per month but over the lifetime of your web site, it adds up)

Other features of SMB Pro, while I'm at it

    1. In-built template text replacement feature.
    2. Provides for different tracking codes for different places the links appear / can be shared
    3. There's no automatic pagination of results - only one page, if that's all you make for a particular niche product / design. If you make more, you have to provide the navigation between them somehow.
    4. Doesn't suffer from tag / description spamming because you hand-select each and every product.
    5. Easy to make collections because of the hand-selection (like a complete set of stationery for a wedding, all with the same design) Brilliant with the personalisation panel!
    6. Leveraging (one action by you leading to a cascade effect) is in-built through the pin / sharing buttons - your referral id and tracking code are included in all pins / repins / shares / reshares. It's trackable down to which one was used and from which page / sharing location. This is because you do that during configuration for the page (great defaults are in place already to help you).

Overall conclusion (as it affects me)

  • I could build a tool to do what Debra's site achieves - pretty much do have that already with SeeMyBest's dynamic page builder feature (free and pro version of SMB)
  • I could therefore do either A or B but choose B because of the SEO aspects, the personalization panel (for sticky pages) and the additional intelligence I get with Google Analytics. You can still get some info from a dynamic page the same way, but because the spiders aren't seeing the dynamic content, it's not nearly as helpful to help in 'tuning' your promotion efforts.
Remember, there's presently a fully-functioning free trial version of SeeMyBest Pro for you to have a play with. See the Zazzle tools forum for how to get access.