I’m finally building myself an online art portfolio at amandahawkins.me – spent a while yesterday going through old collages. This one is from 2006:

All mixes are available for download below through mediafire.com (turn your speakers down before you click, annoying ads).

Merry Christmas Mix, ’11 :: (download)

previous mixes ::
Merry Christmas Mix, ’10 :: (download)
Merry Christmas Mix, ’09 :: (download)
Merry Christmas Mix, ’08 :: (download)
Merry Christmas Mix, ’07 :: (download)
Merry Christmas Mix, ’06 :: (download)

I put together a free little gift giving list in an attempt to get organized. On the left you can add the person it’s for plus any notes or ideas. The right is a mini to-do list and money tracker.

DOWNLOAD -> Holiday Gifts (2.56 MB)

I made up a bunch of silly stuff on one to keep my real ideas a surprise!

Drawing… what’s that?

I think I’ve drawn a total of three things this whole year. How awful is that?
Did a quick collage today and it felt great. Happy 11.11.11!

I imported one of your cool templates into my ipad, and then am using Upad app that will let me draw on top to take notes and do other fun stuff. I’m trying to cut down on paper, but I love how organized your templates make me feel and they’re so pretty to play with. I just love your designs. – Kerrie Carbary

What a great idea! I had just ordered a stylus for the iPad, which I totally recommend, and got to work doodling right away. I tried Upad as well as a couple of other note taking Apps and finally settled on Noteshelf.

Directions

• Save the templates you’d like to use as JPG
• Save them to your iPad photo library
• Import them to your note taking application of choice
• Doodle away!

My favorite is bringing in little photos and scribbling around them and writing notes. Great for digital scrapbooking!

Here are a few of my templates in jpg form, view this post on your iPad and save the below images to import. I just saved you a step, happy planning!

*These images are low resolution for the iPad, not for printing!

I can’t decide what to blog about. Any ideas?

Pinterest has a ‘Pin It’ button available for websites in the ‘Goodies‘ section now. It’s much like the Twitter and Facebook buttons you see EVERYwhere. I added a bit so you can use it in your WordPress theme.

With the following code this button can go on your index, single or archive pages – anywhere the WordPress loop appears. It will automatically pull the first image from the post to be pinned and link to the post’s permalink. The title of the post along with the website url will appear in the description field but can be edited before it’s posted.

Place this code in your template where you want the ‘Pin It’ button to appear – it should be inside The Loop.

<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&media=<?php echo pinterest_image() ?>&description=<?php the_title(); ?> on <?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script>

Put the following code in your functions.php file.

function pinterest_image() {
  global $post, $posts;
  $first_img = '';
  ob_start();
  ob_end_clean();
  $output = preg_match_all('/<img.+src=[\'"]([^\'"]+)[\'"].*>/i', $post->post_content, $matches);
  $first_img = $matches [1] [0];

  if(empty($first_img)){ //Defines a default image
    $first_img = "/images/default.jpg";
  }
  return $first_img;
}

You can change /images/default.jpg to whatever you’d like. This image will be pinned if there’s not an image in the post.

Be really careful in your functions.php file, it’s a little touchier than what you might be used to. The first thing I ever broke in one was putting a space after the closing ?> – it’ll break your whole site! Always back up your files before you start changing things.

Easy as that, happy pinning!

P.S. Before you ask a question about your WordPress theme please do a quick google or codex search – If you still can’t figure it out ask away and I’ll try my best to help when I can!

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UPDATE!

Due to Pinterest’s huge popularity now, there are tons of plugins available that will do this for you. I just did a quick search and this one looks good. WP Beginner also shows a different method that doesn’t involve the function file.

Know of an awesome handmade planner that I’m sorely missing out on? Please share in the comments!