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It’s great to have a variety of photo labels at your disposal. The usual place to put a photo caption is above the photo or beneath it. To put a caption on top of a photo, we’ve been using Photoshop (as I’ve done in the image above). But, as you’ll see in the Captions and Labels Tutorial, putting a caption directly on the photo with regular text can be done easily with CSS. The advantage of using CSS for on-photo captions (versus Photoshop) is that you can change the fonts, the font color, the label color, the location of the label, the rotation, add text shadows, add rounded corners, and add many more settings — all on the fly — with only a few lines of code. You’ll see some of these settings in Screencast #4 or #4S if you’re a Style Member. One of the coolest features of CSS labels is that you can use them on dynamic content like the moving images in your photo sliders. More importantly, you can use the techniques from today’s tutorial to improve and streamline design elements on your blogs (i.e. sidebar titles, text banners, re-align comment numbers, post titles, etc.).
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I’ve received a couple of questions about the carousel plugin I use to display my Instagram photos on my blog footer at Eat Darling Eat. I use SnapWidget. It’s easy to use, it’s compatible with any blog platform, and it’s free. There’s a premium version that offers more display options, but I imagine that for most purposes, the free version is sufficient. You can display your IG photos by simply specifying your Instagram username. Or, you can display photos according to a hashtag filter. When I use hashtags, I want to ensure that only my photos are embedded. I do this by creating a unique hashtag. I realize that this method involves a good guess at best, but if you precede a tag with your blog name, the chances of others using the same hashtag is unlikely! (For this demo, these photos were sourced from my virtually inactive secondary Instagram account, @poweredbypastries.)
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Today I reported to jury duty for the first time. I’ll admit that I exhausted every possible postponement, but today I finally performed my civic duty. As much as I appreciate our jury system, I was relieved when my group was dismissed at the end of the day. Anyway, jury duty wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I did get to read more of A Moveable Feast and I’m on schedule to finish reading it by May 2014! And, I did treat myself to a double espresso, two macarons, and a slice of strawberry pistachio cake to keep my tummy happy for the long afternoon. I took a couple of snapshots, too, and I’m including them with a few more dessert photos I’ve taken recently.
More Instagram photos here.
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I can finally check Steve Jobs off my reading list. It took me a year, but in my defense, I’ll say that I read about 100 fashion magazines in the same time! :) I had lots of chuckles reading about Steve’s ups and downs, but one of the things that sticks in my mind is this Picasso quote he misused to justify appropriating ideas that other people approached him about: Good artists copy, great artists steal. I’m not saying that Steve didn’t come up with great ideas, but in one example, Steve vehemently rejected the initial idea of the Macintosh — only to later announce that he had just come up with a revolutionary idea that would change the world — a computer called the Macintosh!
I suppose we’ve all run into “artists” who do this sort of thing — the kind that rejects a good idea then claims and runs off with it later on — and I thought that the featured font, Decode, with its delicious, impish quotes, is the perfect antidote for the “artists” of the world.
I bought the buttons in the photo at Japantown on one of my visits to the stationery store (yes, I’ve been foraging for cool pens). I forgot all about the pens when I found a box filled with Gemma Correll buttons! I’m a big fan. I have an autographed card!! If you’ve read her blogs (here and here) you know how funny she is. I can picture her with her own cartoon series with chubby pugs, puffy pommies, and dogs wearing bow-ties — just like the little guys on my pins. Cuuuuuute.
Anyway, I see a Pugs Not Drugs t-shirt in my future, but until I have that to show you, how about a look at some of my favorite links from the last couple of weeks? You’ll find an adorable November wallpaper download, an insightful Formspring account, hover states, my fave style posts, some accessories and shoes on my wishlist, new DIYs I wanna try, new blogs I visited, and other fun stuff.
On a more serious note, my best wishes and hopes go out to all of you who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy.
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