Updates this past week includes:

• Congrats to Natty of Divine-Designs for winning Amazing April website of the month contest!
• 1 new layout available as a premade and as a wordpress theme
• Magnificent May 2010, website of the month contest has started. APPLY! NOW! GO GO GO! 

I was looking through my massive collection of random photographs over the years for some weekly photography entry challenges and I came across some really interesting ones. For now I will show these four. From time to time I will hopefully start uploading more. I decided to titles these “Building Blocks” … signifying the building blocks of my life. Set I of many more to come consists of four photographs arranged in no specific order.

In order from top-left corner, going clockwise: (warning, some words may not make sense… it’s late. I cannot sleep. Too much coffee. Very exhausted)

1. Color My Life: I was born in the springtime, and this picture not only signifies my first breath, but the flower also demonstrates my personality. The flower is what we Vietnamese call “Cam Tu Cau” … meaning globe of myriad colors.
2. Always on Bed of Roses: Green is for hope, and this frog was given to me by someone I consider to be a close friend and a great illustration of all that is good in humanity. The title for this photo is borrowed from the phrase “on a bed of roses” … Wiki describes this phrase as:
   

   Bed of roses is an English expression, which means an easy and peaceful life. Most likely based on a rose representing happiness and love, so a bed of roses would represent a very happy life.

   I chose this title not only as a symbol of my gratitude to the wonderful people in my life who makes me feel so lucky to be alive, but also as a wish … to continue lying on a bed of roses… for always.

3. Journey of a Thousand Miles: This photo was taken in Viet Nam, in a small, peaceful, underdeveloped village where I took my first step, spoke my first word… This was home. The Chinese has a proverb that states “A journey of a thousand miles begin with a single step”. This was the road that led me away from home, on my own two feet, alone and scared… on my way to first grade. It was also the road leading me away from home and to America 15 years ago.
4. Ever After: Tiny fake roses using a Valentine’s Day advertisement as a backdrop. We all, at one point or another, search for love in a world where love has become the ultimate symbol of materialism. No longer are the days where girls are serenaded and guys are given hand embellished handkerchiefs as a token of affection. Okay, maybe not so old school… but I feel like dating has been tainted my the marketing media, and while fake roses and diamond rings may last forever, happily ever after should mean more than that. Paper hearts won’t last. We share experiences that hallmark will never be able to illustrate, print, and invoke similar feelings in other people.

I hope everyone enjoys the new look. The top portion of the layout is a little java heavy… So I’d appreciate any feedback as to how terrible it looks… or if it works at all you guys.

I’m also in the process of moving my blog posts over to katiiness, and then eventually you will begin to see random monotonous details of my life, or of my cat, or perhaps even a very graphic account of how the weather is like from the spot in which I was standing under when that post was published… or a about a leaf. Leaves are pretty. Now I’m just wasting words, what a shame.

I promise to Blog … with Purpose!

Enjoy the new content! Check out the new Photoshop brushes, let me know if they’re completely useless. The new layout may have errors, if that’s the case scream at me and I will get it fixed.

Not much of an update at this point, but I’m ecstatic about my new affiliate! Please welcome Nise of TheFlamboyant.net! I think she has an amazingly unique style! I can never design like that even if I wanted to. Yes, I admit it, I’m not that great. xD … Please visit her website and enjoy her quality resources (but all the while, please don’t forget about me, i will be very sad).

Oh, before I forget, I added a new premade entitled Eternal Love. It probably doesn’t look like love, more like a very bad blend of colors… and I’ve never been very indicative of titles in my designs in the small thumbnail view areas of the site … but at this time I’d like to say a few words about how my premades come to bear the names they do now.

I never make a layout with a name in mind, I let the feeling of the inspiration guide my designs, and most of the time they end up being something completely different from the idea of when I first started them. The titles of each layout comes after it is fully designed. And so… Eternal Love may seem like such a senseless name when you first look at the layout. However, the title has a lot of meaning to me. It represents my love for photography, and for art… both of which captures a moment of emotion in life someone wants to remember and frame eternally (for why would you take a picture of something you want to forget…)

That description also probably made no sense. =D

Nonetheless, enjoy!