Tuesday Treasures (actually on Tuesday!)

1. My new blog header. If you're reading this through a blog reader, you should click through and check it out. My friend, Meghan, did this illustration for me ages ago and I was having my blog redesigned around it. Unfortunately, that redesign fell through, so now I'm doing a series of blog design spruces on my own. I couldn't let Meghan's gorgeous handiwork languish on my hard drive any more!

P.S. if you want to contact Meghan, please leave a comment here and I can pass it on. I don't feel comfortable giving out any of her other contact info without her permission.

2. Picnik - If you aren't a flickr user (usr?), you might not know about this amazing little editing program. It does standard things like contrast, color saturation and temperature, cropping, exposure, etc., but it also has tons of filters and features to funkify your photos, add text, and fix cosmetic problems. Since it is built into flickr, it is super easy to edit a ton of photos in a row. Much easier than using an outside program. The basic version is free, or there is a pro version for an annual fee. If you go to picnik's stand-alone website, you can import photos from places other than flickr to edit, and make collages and other projects.

Here's a little demo for you. I just took a photo from my recent trip to San Francisco and ran it through a gamut of picnik tools.

Original photo - straight out of camera

Cropping/Exposure/Contrast fixes



"Lomo-ish" filter

"Orton-ish" filter

1960's filter

HDR-ish filter

HSL filter



Holga-ish filter



Gritty filter



A lot of the fun features come with the free version. I hope you go play around with it. So fun!

3. Bossypants. I'm about halfway through this and I'm loving it. Hilarious. Tina Fey must have taken a lot of influence from her teen years when writing Mean Girls. There are some lines in her autobiography straight out of the movie. Also, I may have seen that movie a few too many times (if such a thing is possible).

4. San Francisco. I had never been to San Francisco before last weekend (that I was old enough to remember, anyway) and I loved it. I pretty much crammed in as much touristy stuff as was possible in 2 1/2 days and it was an amazing trip. I'm jealous of people who get to live there (I get it now!!).

5. This backpack. It's a throwback to the original Jansport design back in the 60s. They even have the original 1967 label design. There are a couple of different backpacks in the Heritage series, and some awesome 80s-style duffels.

It comes in a bunch of great colors if you're not into bright yellow as much as I am.