New Top Border Web Page Background!

Spring will be here soon and in anticipation of that event I've created a top border background with a red flower from the Spring Flowers tube. Not to be satisfied with just plunking it down on the graphic, it's softened with Virtual Painter into a watercolor and embellished with Bezier curve "leaves."

View the thumbnail here.

Be sure to use the username and password required to view the full-sized page which has more details and suggestions for the layout.

This will be it for February's offerings. Only four days left of this month. How time flies!

New Background Tile Graphics!

Did some quick creations of two new mini-tiles and a solid color background tile. One of the mini-tiles is a jell heart, which, unfortunately, is a little too late for Valentine's Day but can be used for any "sweetheart" page. It has a white background. The other mini-tile is a shamrock, just in time for St. Patty's Day or whatever. The regular size tile in a solid color is green. This tile can be paired with the shamrock tile in the CSS code for the background, if you want something other than a white page which is the background color of the shamrock mini-tile.

View and download the mini-tiles here.

View and download the green background tile here.

All of the above background tiles created with Paint Shop Pro; mini-tiles created with PSP tubes also.

Another Milestone: Visitor 8000!

I'm so late in reporting this as usual. My husband and I have been busy remodeling a kitchen, entryway, and half bath which has taken up our weekends since September. Plus, during the week we've gone shopping for materials, etc. The spate of graphics I've been able to release lately are rare nowadays. So long story short, I missed the arrival of visitor number 8000.

He or she is on Earthlink and hails from the Chicago, Illinois area. This visitor was looking for the Aramis font using the Viewpoint search engine on February 9th. They are a PC user with Windows XP and IE 6. Their search for the font would have taken them to my Resources page and then on to 1001 Free Fonts. They could also download the font on that page since it is okay for me to distribute it.

Thanks, visitor 8000, for visiting Arride Graphics!

New Desktop Wallpaper: Jupiter System Montage

Man, am I on a roll this month!

I've just uploaded a new desktop wallpaper with a space theme of Jupiter and her moons. Comes in three sizes: 800x600, 1024x768 and 1152x864. Nice warm colors with this one.

Go to the second wallpapers page then click on the size you want to place on your computer's desktop. A new window opens with the graphic on the page and follow the directions at the top of the page, mainly using your right-click or hover menu to set the graphic as desktop wallpaper or background.

Remember, these graphics are not meant to be used for web pages. Way too big. Enjoy!

Yikes! It's Another Heart Graphic

Before I get to the newest background tile graphic, I need to apologize profusely for making it difficult for anyone to download ANY background tile. I use a template for my main pages and those pages had a right-click disabling script and meta tag on them. So no one could use the right-click menu. I've fixed the affected pages.

On to the newest graphic: I call it "Heart-y" and it's another fancy heart background tile. In a change of process, I've included some sample pages where you can see how it looks tiled using both HTML and CSS. Hope you enjoy this addition to the Valentine or love-themed background graphics!

View the newest graphic.

New Valentine's Day Side Border Background!

Hey, just in time for Valentine's Day web pages or other such "love" pages is Fancy Art Heart. Originally created as a heart only graphic giveaway on my personal blog last year, it's reincarnated as a fancier web page background.

Okay, I confess. I didn't want to start from scratch so I dug up this graphic. I really like the look. It's made from Microsoft Webdings and prettied up using Paint Shop Pro 7. I'm thinking of making a smaller version of the original graphic to use as a mini-tile or maybe even using the original size for a background tile. Let me think about this a little more...

Anyway, enjoy using the background and remember to link back to me!

Short Downtime

The site experienced a short downtime today, Feb. 1, at approximatedly 7 a.m. PST as reported by one of my uptime monitors. It lasted about one hour. No other monitors reported this.

New Desktop Wallpaper: Sunflower Row!

In anticipation of spring and summer, I've just released a new desktop wallpaper called Sunflower Row that'll chase away the winter blues. It features a row of large sunflowers, natch, at the top of a graduated green background. It's available in three sizes to fit screen resolutions from 800x600 to 1024x768 to 1152x864. Created with Jasc Paint Shop Pro tubes, it's sure to brighten up your day every time you get on your 'puter.

Be sure to check out the coordinating but not matching top border web page background called Sunflower already featured at Arride Graphics.

This will close out January's graphic offerings. Be sure to check the main web page or this blog often for new stuff next month.

New Side Border Background

Just uploaded a new side border background called Snowshoes.

This background has old-fashioned snowshoes criss-crossed on a bed of snow. The snowshoe graphic starts at about 130 pixels from the left edge of the background with enough space for your menu or other links on the left side of the graphic. The sample page shows how you can use it.

View the thumbnail on the main side border page and click it to access the full page in a new window. Please remember to use the login information provided on the page as all background graphics are now in a password-protected directory.

Left Border Backgrounds Page

New Old Look and New Desktop Wallpaper

Just updated the pages on the site with an old look made new with changed Flash header and graphics. Layout is a little different, too, with rollover navigation buttons.

More important, there's a new, wintry desktop wallpaper called "Snowy Shrub." Created from my photograph of a lonely, snow-covered shrub in my mountain back yard. Kind of makes you feel chilly, especially if your house is cold. Brrrr!

See the third wallpapers page for it. Comes in three sizes.

Happy New Year!

Wishing all the best to you for 2006!

Wishing for lasting peace and harmony among us all.

Wishing for a better world in which our children and all following generations can live.

Minor Corrections

I just noticed three bad Blue Vinyl Fonts links on the resources page and corrected them. I also corrected some info and link to Paint Shop Pro -- it's now at Corel and now in version 10 instead of 9.

You'll now be able to go to the correct pages. My apologies for the inconvenience of sending you to the wrong places earlier.

Holiday Wishes

Since I will be visiting family for an assortment of things including a niece's birthday and my brother flying in for the holidays, I want to wish all of you now a merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah, both falling on the 25th this year. And since I don't think I'll be near a computer on the 26th either, happy Kwanzaa and Boxing Day for those who celebrate or observe those holidays.

Me, I've been bad by not releasing any sets yet. Winter just started yesterday so I think I still have time to put out another wintry set. If not, then look forward to something for spring.

2006 will be more busy for me because I need to take an outside job to support my hobbies and other household expenses. Bye, bye jeans. Time to put on a business dress for those interviews!

Visitor 7500!

Another milestone reached today before noon PST. Happened sooner than I thought it would but how nice it did.

Visitor number 7500 hails from Nicaragua and surfs using a computer with Windows XP and IE 6. This visitor was using Google to find butterfly wallpaper. Unfortunately, all I have is the Butterfly Nebula wallpaper, so this visitor didn't stay long.

Thank you, anyway, for stopping in.

Snowflake Font

Around this time a lot of people search for snowflake dingbat fonts and how to use them. While I don't offer fonts at this time, I can point you to places where you can find those fonts.

P22 is a commercial font foundry. They offer a lot of cool fonts to buy. If you subscribe to their newsletter (and what fontaholic wouldn't?), you sometimes get free, limited use fonts. Their snowflake font was one offered awhile ago to us subscribers, but you can still download it on this page. Consider buying one or more of their cool, reasonably-priced fonts as well.

Chank! is another commercial font foundry that offers free fonts from their on-site and guest designers. A free dingbat by Spunk called Spunkflakes is your key to snowflake font heaven. Available in Mac and Windows formats. Consider buying for cheap, Chankflakes or FriskyFlakes (really cheap!), both available as Mac or Windows versions. Snowflake dingbats are also available in an open type package of multiple fonts for only $49 on their site.

Aenigma Fonts offers a PC only free dingbat font called Faux Snow. Click on View to see one example or on CS to see the whole character set. Clicking the name opens the download window. Another possibility is the font, 90 Stars, which actually look like five-pointed snowflakes to me. Check out the character set first.

You can also find a servicable snowflake (one style only) in the Microsoft Wingdings using capital T. It's not the prettiest snowflake but it has the requisite six-sides. I created a background tile using this font that you are free to download to use on your computer's desktop or a web page. Go to my patterned tiles page at http://www.arride.com/ptiles5.html to view and download this graphic.

How to use:

After you download the font, open the file into your fonts folder in your computer's hard drive. In Windows navigate to your control panel then open the Fonts folder. Once inside, click on Install font then navigate to your downloaded font. Be sure you've unpacked the font from its zip file first or else you won't see it to install it.

Most PCs using Windows will have a built-in paint program called Paint (duh) and you can use that to create a snowflake from the selected font. However, it is not a sophisticated enough program to create one as a transparent background .gif usable on different colored web pages nor with layers on another graphic such as a photo.

For that I suggest looking at some of the graphics software listed on my resources page. I might add that Paint Shop Pro is perfect for this purpose.

If you want to use snowflakes in a text document such as a letter, you won't have to worry about any of the above. Just use the dingbat like you're using a different font by changing the font selection in your document. However, keep in mind that unless your recipient also has the same font in their computer, they will not see the snowflake in the document as is. In order for the recipient to see a snowflake, the snowflake has to be added to the document as an image. A printout of the document from YOUR computer will have the snowflake, of course. This caveat is true of web pages also.

Those are just a few of the places to find snowflake fonts and use them. You can find more by searching in your favorite search engine or directory using the words, "font dingbat snowflakes."

(edited 11/27/2007 to add disclaimer in paragraph 9, on 11/28/2007 to add another font in paragraph 4, and on 12/14/2007 to add the link to a snowflake graphic)

A Change in Resources Page

Matthew Petty finally closed down his font site, Disturbed Fonts. All of his fonts are now in the public domain. I offer a download of his "Trash" font for both PC and Mac but you can also find this font and a few others at DaFont. I've changed the resources page to reflect the new status.

I managed to download all of the fonts he offered before he closed his site. I'm not sure what to do with them now, but I may open a font archive in the future that includes his fonts. A new web site will take more effort on my part and my life is changing in ways unanticipated a year ago. So, time will tell.

Down, Down, Down...

My web host reported a network outage at the datacenter on Dec. 11th as did my three site uptime monitors. One of them also reported an outage on Dec. 12th. Both outages lasted about one hour. No reasons given by the host.

Hmmm, Downtime Ag'in

This is getting old, folks. Downtime late Tuesday evening until early Wednesday morning for about an hour. Got a question turned into my host to find out what's going on, but I doubt I'll hear anything pertinent. Maybe the server is going kaput or there's too many sites hosted on it. Wouldn't doubt either.

Still trying to decide what set or next graphic to release. Busy month for me inside and outside of Internet. Hang in there!

Downtime Early Saturday

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Dec. 4, the site experienced downtime of about one hour. Reported by all three of my site monitoring tools.

Downtime Yesterday

For a couple of hours in the morning the server my site is hosted on was down. My host notified me by e-mail and I received notices from three monitoring services around the world. No worries.

I've worked on a new snowflake set but haven't released it yet. It's a little different from the ones I already offer. But I'm not too happy with it, so it needs to be re-worked. Look for it next month.

I don't know about you, but I'm already looking forward to spring. lol

Gloomy winter weather just isn't for me.