Email Subscriber Update and a Layout from Maille Belles

If you just want to see today's card, please scroll down and ignore the verbiage. If you subscribe by email, please read the verbiage.


Email Subscriber Update

When Eva and I met up the other day, she mentioned difficulty replying to the emails she receives as a subscriber through my FeedBurner account. She's not the only person who's expressed difficulty with this.

Frankly, Feedburner is a pain in the patootie. Several years ago, it decided not to play nicely with a lot of major email providers, and about 800 of my subscribers stopped getting emails. When I explored other email subscriber services, it turned out to be prohibitively expensive (upwards of $50 per month, in fact). So we're stuck with Feedburner, and I'm really sorry about this.

I looked around and couldn't find any way to address this issue sensibly. There are a few things you can do to work around the problem.

1. Add Susan Raihala and the email susanraihala at roadrunner dot com to your email address book, and then forward the email to me rather than hitting reply. Once I'm in your contacts, this option will be almost as easy as simply replying and should solve the problem.

2. Go to Simplicity's website by clicking in the email on the post title, scroll down on the page, and leave a public comment. I'm going to enable anonymous commenting again, and as long as the spam stays minimal, it'll stay that way. If I start getting a bunch of comments for sexxy grrls and varicose vein surgery, anonymous commenting will, once again, go away because no. Just no.

3. Subscribe to Simplicity via another avenue. There's a full list of options on the Subscribe Tab at the top of the blog. If you read a number of blogs, a blog reading service like BlogLovin or Feedly might be a more efficient option than email anyway.

Also, if you're on Facebook, know that I link to every post on Simplicity by Lateblossom's page there, so new posts will show up in your feed automatically.

And if you're a Pinterest junkie, follow my Cards by Susan Raihala page, and all you have to do is click on the photo. It'll take you to the post and you can comment there.  


A Layout from Maille Belles

On to a more entertaining topic...the genius of Maille Belles. If you've not encountered her blog, go there. Scroll around. She's truly amazing. The card that inspired me is HERE.

My card's layout is almost exactly like hers...or as alike as it can be with a different focal point.

This cup of fabulousness makes me so happy! It's from a Hero Arts set called Coffee Cup Tags. It was extremely easy to cut out, so no worries about not having a die cut machine. The holly also comes from a Hero set. To add some sparkle, I used Sakura stardust pens in red for the holly and clear to outline the whipped cream.

This is a GREAT layout for spotlighting larger images while still maintaining plenty of white space.

Note that Maille's card uses an angel with a strong vertical element (wings) that pushes the angel away from the line at the edge of her border. I love how she placed the sentiment in a way that "fills" the space under the left wing. The sentiment's strong vertical feel also helps balance the layout.

My cup, shaped totally differently than Maille's angel, still has strong vertical elements, including the sleeve with the sentiment. Since my sentiment is on the large, blocky image, my cup straddles the line so that one third is over the border with two thirds over the white space...thus preserving the rule of thirds. If the line had bisected the cup, it would have looked weird.

I'm sure Maille would never do that.



Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: Hero Arts, Archival
paper: Papertrey Ink white
accessories: craft foam, Sakura stardust pens in red and clear, gold Prismcolor gold metallic pen, ruler