Ad Free Blog Saying No to Corporate Advertising

My blog does not qualify as an “ad free blog”, but that’s because I feel that if I can get a little bit of money from having advertisements related to the content on my website, then fine. If I don’t, that’s still fine. But, I thought I would share this anyway, for those of you who don’t have any advertisements or don’t accept any form of payment for advertisement space.

Get your own button to display on your blog to show others that your blog is ad free.

Create Your Own Coloring Pages

I found a tutorial for creating coloring pages from photos. This is a great idea. It can also be great as gifts from the kids for other family members. Plus, this is a good way to save money on all those coloring books!

I opened the picture I wanted to use and created a new layer. Then I used the photocopy filter and adjusted the settings for detail and darkness until I was satisfied. Then I created a new adjustment layer and changed the shadow and highlight levels. I was tempted to use the lasso tool to cut the background out of the picture, because I think this would make a better coloring page if it was just the car alone, but that would involve more work and I was just trying this out. Read the tutorial for detailed steps.

I chose to use my last project as the picture for this coloring page. Click the preview on the right to view the full image.

If you are here searching for actual coloring pages of any of the Cars characters, take a look at this Disney Cars page. Coloring Book has the best selection of Cars coloring pages.

Pixar’s Cars Lightning McQueen Eclipse

I have very little experience with Photoshop when it comes to customizing images, but I do know some basics from the training I received at work. I came across a tutorial for transforming a picture of a car into one of the cars from the movie Cars.

Because I thought it was cute, I gave it a try. The steps on the tutorial could go into more detail for some of us who aren’t that great with Photoshop, but I managed to figure things out. I probably could have done better, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out and glad I was able to learn something new. Plus, my son enjoyed seeing it; he loves the movie. As I was adding the eyes to the car, he immediately mentioned the movie.

For my car, I used a picture of David’s Mitsubishi Eclipse that I had taken a few years ago. Since it was raining, the car has a wet look to it. I would have preferred a nicer picture, but I had to work with what I had. For the eyes and mouth, I went with Lightning McQueen because he’s a red car and I knew it would be less of a challenge of getting it to blend in. Click on the preview on the right to view the full image.

A couple other people have tried this as well. I didn’t know this at first, but one of them (Adam) is the one who created the theme I added to my website just yesterday! Anyway, here’s Adam’s car and here’s the other one by Shawn from Sporadic Nonsense. They both did much better than I did, because I’m a beginner at this and don’t have much experience at all. Good job you two!

Updated Design

After having settled on the last look, because there just weren’t many that I liked, I recently found this one (the one you see). I’m not very creative when it comes to creating my own design, but I do know what I like. If I can use something that is already created rather than re-creating it, I’ve saved time!

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What is Your Website’s Score?

Silktide SiteScore analyzes your website based on factors such as design, accessibility, marketing, popularity and experience. I used this tool to check my website’s score and it resulted in a 6.4. I’m very pleased with this score because my website hasn’t been around as long as most of the higher scored websites.

Click the preview on the right to view the full image.

If you have a website, find out what your website scores with Sitescore. The results page is very nicely put together and easy to understand. If you need more than what Sitescore offers, Sitescore Enterprise might be for you. It includes a test for search engine optimization and performance, accessibility and W3C tests, spell check, testing of technical problems and tracking website changes which are logged for later review.

If you like how my website is designed, please vote for it.

UPDATE: My website currently scores a 6.7!