Happy New Year!

I resolve to do a lot of "house-cleaning" this year. As I mentioned last year there are some small changes coming to this site. I intend to work on it all year, though, hopefully it won't actually last that long.

In the meantime, here is a desktop wallpaper (out of a couple or so I'd promised late last year.) 

I don't know what it is but soon after winter sets in I'm thinking about the warm summer weather. When I was looking for starter material for a desktop wallpaper I was looking at fall and winter themes. But I got tired of feeling so cold and was wishing for warmer weather. (In my neck of the "woods" we're really in a rain drought and do need the rains and snows.)

Going through the downloads from morguefile.com I found this photo of shells on a beach taken by veggiegretz. It's different from the other beach photo I used for another desktop wallpaper so it was perfect. Using Corel Painter Photo Essentials, I tried out a variety of paint effects. The watercolor effect kept it light and airy so that's the one used for this wallpaper.

Go now to the 5th desktop wallpapers page to find this summery image for your computer. It comes in six resolutions from 640x480 to 1440x1080.

November's Desktop Wallpaper

Hey, it's here! Download November now in one of two looks: Regular or Enhanced. Regular starts out with one of my landscape photos that I applied the Watercolor filter to and using the font, Pristina by the Esselte Corporation, created the latest calendar desktop wallpaper. Enhanced goes a step further with autumn leaves from a PSP tube. While I really like how the regular calendar turned out, I thought it needed a little something extra to give it more "oomph"; thus, the leaves. So I offer for this month two versions of November.

Choose one or both versions from the fourth page of the Wallpapers section. You can either download the image to install later or apply the desktop wallpaper now. Instructions are on each window of the size you choose.

More news: December will be the last calendar desktop wallpaper I'll make. I'm not sure how well these are being accepted because I don't receive any feedback. So instead of me working hard to create these graphics for the public, I'll resume creating them for my personal enjoyment only. But I will continue to make desktop wallpapers in general.

Last Two Space-themed Desktop Wallpapers

I've uploaded the last two desktop wallpapers with space images from GRIN. One is a revisit featuring the Carina Nebula. The other is an image taken by the Apollo 8 crew of the Earth rising over the moonscape.

The Carina Nebula is one of the most beautiful nebulae in the universe. I had offered it only in the 800x600 size, so this time I changed the look a little and created four sizes including another 800x600 size.

The Earthrise wallpaper puts you over the moon looking back at the Earth as it looked way back on December 29, 1968. Many of you haven't been born yet; many of you remember those years as being turbulent ones. Yet, how peaceful and beautiful our planet looked from space. This wallpaper is offered in four sizes to fit most of your monitors' resolutions.

Download one or both wallpapers from the second wallpapers page. Be sure to check out the other desktop wallpapers on the other three pages, too.

Two Cool Desktop Wallpapers Pages

While I love offering desktop wallpapers for you to download, I also like some of the wallpapers available around the 'Net. Two of the sites I love are The Nature Conservancy, a conservation organization, and the National Geographic Society, known to me as a magazine but it's an organization that documents all things scientific, cultural and natural around the globe as well as funds projects. Both offer some of the most fantastic photographic desktop wallpapers around.

I've always admired the photos taken by the National Geographic photographers. They are beautiful and moving. Ever since they began offering photographic calendars, I've been buying them each year. So when they started offering desktop wallpapers, I've stopped by their web site to check them out and download a few.

Every month I get e-mail newsletters from The Nature Conservancy about their projects and an offer of a new download of desktop wallpapers. Besides the wallpapers they also offer nature e-cards which I haven't checked out yet.

Every now and then I like to have a new look on my desktop, not satisfied with the same old image day after day, month after month, nor with the standard stuff MS offers. So these two sites allow me to have a different and fabulous look on my computer's desktop. Of course, sometimes I have one of my own on there, too. But check out these two sites. It's one way to see the world without actually having to travel there.

The Nature Conservancy's "Decorate Your Desktop" page
National Geographic Photo Archive - wallpapers and photos to e-mail