Vacation Pics Coming Soon

OK - I'm back from a much needed weeks break to the Maya Riviera. I have some nice shots of beaches and stuff like that, so those that are suitable for backdrops I'll soon put into the 'Freebie' section of the website, but it probably won't be until the weekend.

As an aside, I spent a few hours considering opening a bar here in Calgary inspired by my stay in Mexico - it'll be called 'Leightons Sandy Crack', a tasteful title I know. If it ever comes to pass, it will have the following features for those of us up here in the Great White North that don't get a whole lot of beach fever during the year:

• tanning beds
• the entire floor will be sand, with a little wading pool
• 80% humidity
• 30-34c all year around
• bar (wet and dry, naturally)
• beach volleyball court
• tropical drinks
• variety of nic-nacs for sale behind the bar

I spent a good hour by the pool figuring that lot out - feel free to post further suggestions as to what needs to be included ;)

In the meantime stay tuned for further ramblings...

Special Day Banners Now Available!

All right, back in the ring today with my old nemisis the website.

I've got a number of photos of projects that I've completed that haven't found their way into the gallery, so I'm trying to clear that backlog - a thankless and tedious task I might add. Today it was the turn of some 'special event' banners that I produced. So, they are available for viewing here:

http://www.fpdimages.com/category.asp?ID=117

It'll be a while before I get any 'stock' designs (as mentioned on the above URL) made as I need a healthy bout of inspiration before I sink my teeth into that.

On the plus side, I found a much quicker way in Corel Paint to achieve the 'faded picture edge' effect that gives the soft-edge feel to the graphics, so it wasn't an entire waste of time!

Lastly, ages back I did a vehicle lettering project for 'The Register' - you can read the full story here - so I'll probably put portions of that on my site next...

...more soon...

First Newsletter Goes Live

In a moment of absolute astonishment, the newsletter email and web-page version has gone live without a hitch. Incredible. Incase you're wondering or at all care, it was assembled in MS Publisher.

If you subscribe to our newsletter, you should by now have a copy in your inbox, if not - sign up here:

http://www.fpdimages.com/category.asp?ID=85

or view the newsletter online here:

http://www.fpdimages.com/category.asp?ID=116

Take care, people!

All Things Bright and Sparkly

Well, it's been a busy couple of days.

Additional pages have been added that describe shipping and pricing policies - with any luck this will dispell some of the mystery surrounding how pricing is calculated. Shipping is always a nightmare to explain, so a comprehensive guide for that has also been created. I'm pretty happy with how both came out, particularly the pricing guide as that's full of 'ifs' and 'buts' when a client first makes contact with us.

I hate doing web-work. I can't understand why anyone would want to do this for a living. For all the wonders that technology has to offer you'd have thought that by now we'd have progressed past the point of spending hours and hours fiddling with icons and cells and the bizzare rules that govern column spacing. Infuriating - what can I say.

With any luck I'll be able to get the newsletter out tomorrow which will be good because it's been a while since I last sat down and put pen to paper there.

Besides catching up with web-work, which I hate with a passion you can only imagine - not much else going on right now besides the run of the mill projects.

Fingers crossed though that when I find a few minutes to make some calls, things with the PopYerStress625 sheets might take off a bit. Plus, the newsletter for the local community association showed up at the end of the week so there are some people in there I'll be contacting for activites that would lend themselves nicely to needing out-door banners and such.

OK - so, this is our blog - and, welcome from all of us at Team FPDI.

In a sense this is a bit like January the 1st, isn't it? You've spent the last week and a bit waiting to crack open that lovely new, crisp diary that your grandma gave you and now it's finally here - January the first. At first it seem like the dullest gift on the planet - but now it comes into a life of it's own.

You've meticulously filled in all the Emergency Contact info, the addresses and phone numbers of everyone you've ever known and then ran out of space on the 'E' page and started writing down the margin.

Now for the big moment. It's time to fill in the details of your first tentitive steps into a new year.

With the exception here of course that it's April 1st - and let's face it who can't fail to see the irony there?

Almost a month and a half ago some programming code broke when we moved our site to a new server. Unfortunately, no-one noticed so when we went to update the site well over a month ago we had to wait for maintenance to come and fix it. It's now working, so most of this week has been spent updating products, correcting a host of grammar errors (thanks BTW to all of you who do correct our site for us!) and addition of some new products - specifically:

• Enormous 'Darwin Has A Posse' sticker (15"x5")
• PopYerStress625 - the definitive bubble-wrap stress relief device and lastly
• A graphic for the Oil/Gas Industry

So - this is it - our blog, our first post. Happy day ;)