I still remember this time last year, I was busy hunting down beautiful Christmas trees in Singapore to feature as my “Christmas Tree of the Day“. A year later today, I still very much enjoy doing this. For me it’s just one of the many things I look forward to at Christmas :) and for many of you, the series brings much festive joy.

Now more than ever a year doesn’t seem that long. A friend recently told me that there’s a theory out there that claims time passes faster today than before. It’s not merely an illusion and it actually is happening (although time itself IS an illusion).

I’m not sure how true this is. It does seem that time is passing faster now as compared to, say, when I was 10. Does anyone have a theory? I would love to hear it.

Many of us are too focused, worried or afraid about the past and the future to fully live in the moment. I say this Christmas, let’s all treasure and hold on to what we have now. Because only by letting go of our fears and worries would we be truly happy.

Merry Christmas to all of you! I wish you and your loved ones all the peace, joy and love in the world this holiday. Have a great one!

Much love,
Veron

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Anyways, rather than let it go to waste, I made it into an actual usable theme for this blog. Notice 2 new shiny buttons on the top right hand corner? They allow you to turn on/off the lights on this page and switch between the 2 design styles! (feed readers and email subscribers, you would have to come to sparklette.net to see this.)

Let it be night!

Let there be light!

You like? It involved quite a fair bit of hard work as I had to create 2 separate sets of images and stylesheets to achieve this effect. But who knows, if I’m hardworking enough I might just make a snowy white one for Christmas!

Let me know which is your favourite! If you’re fascinated, you can view many more interesting style switchers on smashing magazine.

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We also thought that as with every great website, it deserves its own customised logos during special occasions, like google’s. So during Christmas ’06, the first ever holiday logo was created for Ping.sg. It was very well-received and spurred me to create a whole series of holiday logos.

All of these are based on the original blue “ping” logo. Here they are, all in one place! This post would be continually updated as more logos are created. So do bookmark this page and check back for new logos!

I experimented with changing the background colour of the logo. So it appears as though koi fish are swimming in a blue pond, with pink waterlilies afloat.

There aren’t too many opportunities when I can take my chances with a purple logo. Deepavali (diwali) just happens to be one of them. This being the festival of light, I added Indian lamps, while the colourful peacock feather lends a dash of colour.

Mother’s day falls on May 11 for 2008. On this wonderful and meaningful day, I create this logo just for her. I attempt to keep things simple by colouring it in pink and adding just a single stalk of richly-detailed rosebud (you can even see the water droplets). I really like how things turned out.

Labor day! In Singapore, this falls on the first day of may each year. Working people get the day off on this rather ironically named day. An axe, a hammer and a screwdriver symbolise the tools that labourers may use. Then, there’s the workman wearing his hardhat, with a traffic cone and a stop sign.

I have been waiting for a chance to use my favourite colour. That chance came when valentine’s day arrived, probably the only time when a purple logo would be appropriate! Cuddly teddy bears and gifts are things that this day can’t go without. A big heart glows in pink to remind us all that the most important element of this day is still love.

As Chinese New Year coincides with spring, pink spring blossoms are featured here. Dangling from the top are chinese lanterns in bright pink. Look out for those firecrackers — they are lit!

It’s always fun designing stuff for Christmas. I gave the logo an icy, translucent effect (note how the candy cane can be seen through the ice) and dotted the “i” with a snowflake. In the foreground are a bunch of colourful gift boxes and Christmas baubles. As a finishing touch, I let the “g” wear a woolly Santa hat!

For Hari Raya haji, the logo has turned green, a prominent festive colour. In addition to that, I have also painted it over with a faint paisley design. This is the first time I have experimented with patterns in this logo series. ketupats (malay rice cakes) dangle from the logo. Once again, I made use of the dot in the “i”, replacing it with the islamic symbol.

This spooky logo designed for Halloween 2007 is another of my favourites! Like the valentine’s day 2007 logo, I have tweaked the logo colour to black. bats fly around it while a black cat arches its back. Also present are two jack-o-lanterns, an important Halloween element. Try spotting the little ghost!

The Mid-Autumn Festival is also known as the Moon Festival. On this day, the full moon is significantly bright. Besides having the full moon in this logo, I have also hanged a couple of brightly coloured paper lanterns. At night children would go out in the dark carrying such lanterns.

Ping.sg has gone pink! To celebrate valentine’s day, I coloured the logo pink and scattered red hearts in various sizes all over. A paper cutout couple in baby blue and pink stands hand in hand, deeply in love.

As a kid, I would play with small firecrackers during Chinese New Year when visiting relatives in Malaysia (it’s legal there). Similarly in this logo, a little girl dressed in red sets a firecracker alight. Also present are common Chinese New Year items such as the chinese “fu” (?, fortune) character (hung upside down to signify that fortune has arrived) and mandarin oranges.

Right after Christmas, I designed a logo for new year 2007. This time round, I went for a celebratory theme. The things you would usually see at a new year’s party can be found here, such as colourful balloons, confetti, wine and some bubbly, of course.

I created this logo for Christmas 2006 shortly after I joined the team. snowflakes fall and accumulate on the logo. A yellow glowing star is used to dot the “i” while a Christmas wreath hangs on the “n”. To add a touch of cute, I brought in frosty the snowman to wave hi! To date, this remains my most favourite Ping.sg holiday logo.

Personally I prefer the logos that retain the original blue, with additional little elements used sparingly. Simplicity is key. With such little screen estate to work with, it’s best not to incorporate both colour changes and several elements into one logo (Christmas 2007, valentine’s day 2008).

It also helps that the original logo looks visually balanced (the “p” and “g” are flipped characters), which makes designing on top of it that much easier. I do get some help from icon and clipart resources and wouldn’t dare take full credit for all of them.

So what do you think? Let me know which one is your favourite!

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Christmas is, and always will be, extra magical. During this time of the year, I tend to go all out to show my family and friends how much I care and appreciate them.

Many people in my life mean a lot to me, but they may not know it because I don’t say it enough (don’t we all have the same problem?). I can rattle off a whole list of names, but I just know I would miss someone out. I hope you guys know just how special you are.

My blog is one of the things that I truly feel passionate about. It is after all the evidence of my existence, as I like to call it. Without you, my dear readers, regularly leaving comments and sending me email messages, I probably wouldn’t have been motivated enough to push myself this far, blogging wise.

Blogging has opened a whole world of opportunities for me. To put it more accurately, you have opened a whole world of opportunities for me. For that, I really wanna say a big thank you!

This Christmas has been most wholesome and enjoyable, not to mention chocolific and beary special too! Many thanks to all the people who made it this way. You complete me.

Have a blessed Christmas everyone! may it be filled with warmth, joy and love for all of you :)

Much love,
Veron

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If you haven’t already had plans for the day, you may wanna pop by Little India to admire the street light-up and enjoy the festivities.

Happy holiday!

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Click to enlarge

Welcome to the dark side! We have spooky storm clouds! Spooky mist! Even the dreamy neuschwanstein castle has turned spooky. I was going for the whole haunted castle look! Be sure to view it in full size!

I meant to use the black layout for this whole Halloween week, I really did. But time wasn’t on my side. I had just enough time to design the piece but not enough to actually implement it on the blog.

Personally, I really like how this whole thing turned out and thought it would be quite a waste if you guys didn’t get to see it. So, there you go! Meanwhile, I’ll just settle for wearing a black witch’s pointed hat.

Happy Halloween!

November 10, 2008: I made this into a usable theme after all! Check out the shiny new style switcher.

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]]> 7 http://sparklette.net/web-design/happy-mid-autumn-festival/ http://sparklette.net/web-design/happy-mid-autumn-festival/#comments Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:49:14 +0000 Veron Ang http://sparklette.net/archives/happy-mid-autumn-festival-2007/

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone! May your day be filled with lots of yummilicious mooncakes, colourful lanterns and happy family reunions!

Have a great one!

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After being awarded “best blog design” at Ping.sg, I think it’s finally time for me to do a quick recap of all the different designs that Sparklette has sported since 2002!

Each and every design bears several personal elements to it, be it relating to my favourite things or the state of mind I was in as I designed a layout at that particular point in time.

When I first started this website in late 2002, the world had only just seen the dawning of the blog craze. At that time, I started this site not really to blog, but mainly because I needed something to design.

In version 1 (titled “angel wings”), I used a cartoonish image of rinoa heartilly, a female character from my favourite RPG, final fantasy VIII. It became the first out of a few other purple layouts that I did subsequently.

I created version 2 (titled “autumn sonata”) from scratch. It was made up of maple leaves in different hues of purple, blue and green, littered with white orbs flying all over the place like “shimmering sparkles”. In fact, I liked those leaves so much I brought them back to this current castle layout!

In versions 1 and 2, I did not use any engine to create my blog entries. Every single blog post was painstakingly coded with love, and then copied and pasted into monthly archive pages. Why? Because I was a control freak and didn’t want to use blogspot or diaryland (the two most popular blogging platforms at that time) like everyone else.

Eventually, the manual hard labour got too tiresome. I finally decided to use a blogging engine called “greymatter” as I rolled out version 3 (titled “passed me by”).

At that time, I was feeling lost. My feelings were depicted by the anime image of a girl sitting in a playground, against a black and white cityscape. The giant clock in the background represented how the world was always busy and constantly passing me by.

The butterfly that had been emancipated from a glass jar and flying towards daylight represented how trapped I felt and how I longed to be free.

It was a pretty dark layout, hence black was the choice of colour.

The words seen in the design:

“looking back on all it has been,
It has seemed that all along,
Time has passed me by…
As I walk into the real world again
I wonder…
What am I supposed to do now?”

Version 4 – Innocence
Spanned: July 10, 2003 – November 22, 2003
Lifespan: 4 months 12 days
More info on this layout

You know it had to happen! Sooner or later I had to feature my favourite animal in my blog layout! It came in version 4 (titled “innocence”) where I used a kitty theme!

The main image was one of a sleeping kitten. It was very innocent, sweet and adorable. The lyrics featured in the background was from the song “hear me cry” by Japanese band, cagnet.

What goes with innocence? Pink, of course!

Version 5 – Illusion
Spanned: November 22, 2003 – March 12, 2004
Lifespan: 3 months 20 days
More info on this layout

My love for Northern lights was depicted in version 5, “illusion”. The illusion I wanted to create was of a dolphin seemingly swimming in the heavens, complete with stars and Northern lights.

The words seen in the design:

“What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction.
And the greatest good is of slight worth,
Since life is but a dream, and dreams are only dreams.”

Version 6 – Summer Lovin’
Spanned: March 12, 2004 – June 16, 2004
Lifespan: 3 months 4 days
More info on this layout

For the first time, I experimented with using a bright colour scheme in my design. It was a flop initially because I made the mistake of creating the layout solely on my laptop, without double-checking to see if the colours looked fine on a desktop computer. They didn’t, and many of my readers complained of being blinded by the brightness!

I fixed the colours and the resultant summery theme had cheery colours, with palm trees, sunflowers and even a pink roxy logo in the background (I was never sued).

The words seen in the design:

“I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year.”

Version 7 – Alone
Spanned: June 16, 2004 – October 24, 2004
Lifespan: 4 months 8 days
More info on this layout

Version 7 (titled “alone”) had more of a moody and cold feel to it. I used yet another anime image of a girl sitting alone in winter with snowflakes whirling around.

The words seen in the design:

“I’ve learned that goodbyes will always hurt, pictures will never replace having been there, memories good or bad will bring tears, and words can never replace feeling.”

“Sometimes you have to weather many storms before you find your rainbow.”

Did you spot the faint rainbow in the background?

Version 8 – Purple Dreams
Spanned: October 24, 2004 – January 30, 2005
Lifespan: 3 months 6 days
More info on this layout

My love for london (although I’ve never been there) and travel propelled me to feature big Ben in version 8, “purple dreams”.

The numerous stars in the purple sky include the orion constellation. I created an animated gif so that the stars in the orion actually twinkled! The silver bracelet is a piece of jewellery I own from tiffany & co.

The words seen in the design:

“I can’t wait all my life on a street of broken dreams.”

Version 9 – Void
Spanned: January 30, 2005 – June 28, 2005
Lifespan: 4 months 28 days
More info on this layout

Version 9 (titled “void”) has somewhat of a sci-fi/astronomy theme, with swirling galaxies and a space observatory. The pink flowers featured are oriental lilies, my favourite flowers.

This is one of my few most favourite layouts to date.

Version 10 – How Far is Heaven?
Spanned: June 28, 2005 – May 17, 2006
Lifespan: 11 months 19 days
More info on this layout

For the first time, I used my own photograph in a layout. I distinctly remember putting more thought and effort in this design than ever before. It was also the most colourful.

I was looking to create a scene from what my idea of heaven would be. Hence, this piece was titled “how far is heaven?”, also from the song “heaven” by the los lonely boys.

So, my idea of heaven has a clear blue sky with fluffy white clouds and millions of tiny stars. The outer space is also clear and visible, evident from the galaxy in the sky.

Dandelions and flower petals would float everywhere, and everything would look beautiful. There would be colourful daisies too, my second most favourite flower (after the oriental lilies).

Finally, there would be peace, as represented by the tranquil scene of a white boat on a calm purple lake.

The words seen in the design:

“I am like a falling star in a lovely constellation,
Wanting to sparkle in the heavens
Forever.”

Ta-da! There you go! All the ten different looks of Sparklette since 2002! My personal favourite is version 10, although I do love this current castle/fairy tale layout too.

Tell me which one is your favourite!

Much love,
Veron

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With help from a friend, I hurriedly designed the name card and sent it in to print22, a local printer specialising in name cards. I heard a couple of recommendations for this company before and trusted them to do a good job. It wouldn’t reflect nicely if I was to hand out name cards with a shoddy print job!

The artwork was simple — purple on one side with “sparklette.net” in crisp white font; clean white on the other with just my name, what I do, and contact details in dark purple. It had to look clean, uncluttered, professional, with the touch of a designer feel at the same time!

The artwork was sent to the printer on Friday, and I received the name cards by the following Wednesday morning. That’s a pretty reasonable lead time considering the printing was done in Hong Kong.

Overall, I am very happy with the name cards! The paper quality was good and the print job was excellent. I thought I could have made the font smaller, but that might not have been too legible for some people.

I have received several compliments from people that I gave it to, ranging from the paper texture, print quality, colour, and even the smell! Hahaha! It’s a lovely shade of lilac, just like the background colour of this blog, although some of the guys who got it thought that it’s pink!

Yay! My first Sparklette name card! Raise your hand if you got one!

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Since a third of all visitors to Sparklette are Americans, I figured some of them may actually be colourblind. As a designer, I am curious as to how this website looks to a colour-blind person. So I downloaded this Photoshop filter to find out.

To a person who’s not colourblind, this is what Sparklette looks like:

(Okay, I get that the screenshot isn’t entirely necessary, but it’s here for easy comparison.)

There are different kinds and levels of colour blindness. This is how the site looks to a protanope (I swear, I am not calling anyone names!):

A person with protanopia can’t differentiate between red and green hues. Another form of red-green colour blindness is deuteranopia:

Those two look rather similar since they are both forms of red-green colour blindness. I can’t really tell any difference except that in deuteranopia, the red hues seem closer to the actual colours.

For blue-yellow colour blindness, or tritanopia, this is how this website appears:

Then, there is the most extreme form of colour blindness known as achromatopsia. That’s total colour-blindness. The person sees only grey tones:

How terrible to not see the world in colour!

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All the other websites featured there are really beautifully done, mostly in cool black or brilliant colour schemes! In fact, mine pales in comparison as one with a much softer colour palette used.

It is an honour to have been highlighted! All along I thought this blog design would be known only in the local blog circles. I certainly didn’t expect it to catch the attention of any overseas website. I think I have newfound confidence in designing and blogging!

For more background information on how I designed this layout, check out this post.

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I hope it’s a good year ahead for your zodiacal sign. I am born in the year of the rat, and apparently it would be a year of good fortune. I don’t believe in fortune-telling or any form of astrology or that whole “it’s all written in the stars” crap. But well, I can really use any kind of blessing right now.

To a great year!

Much love,
Veron

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Have you bought your Halloween decorations or cooked your Halloween dishes yet? For ideas on holiday food, check out my list of 25 crazy and wacky Halloween dishes for an extreme Halloween!

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]]> 0 http://sparklette.net/web-design/911-five-years-on/ http://sparklette.net/web-design/911-five-years-on/#comments Sun, 10 Sep 2006 17:05:06 +0000 Veron Ang http://sparklette.net/?p=456

I think you would probably remember exactly where and what you were doing the moment that horrible news came on September 11, 2001. Personally I was having my economics class back in ACJC. Instead of discussing inflation and plotting price-quantity graphs, murmurs regarding the attacks were circulating around the class. At that point in time no one had fully grasped the gravity of the situation yet. But from then on the world as we know it had been fractured, the New York city skyline changed forever.

For those people who were trapped in the towers hit by the planes, I cannot even begin to fathom the despair they felt. To feel so hopeless that their only hope was to leap 80 floors to their deaths. To the people who are still struggling to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones, please know that the world is with you! For those terrorists, did they seriously think that killing thousands of innocent people would bring them to heaven?

How about you? What were you doing on 9/11?

---

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