I’ve just given JoieArt.net another facelift in favor of something a bit more professional. I know blog aren’t supposed to change their look this often, but JoieArt is still a relatively new blog and so hopefully it will only have positive effects instead of negative.

This particular theme is more streamlined, professional, and easier to organize. It also forced me to revamp my categories and add tags, but that’s something I should have done to begin with. I’m still tweaking and adding things as I go, but hopefully this can be a theme I can stick with for quite awhile.

This theme was designed by Samk.ca, and is quite lovely.

I’m messing around with the layout for the site this evening, and like what I’ve got so far. It’s a theme called Pink Orchid that I’m modifying to meet my own needs… and so far it’s looking ok. I’ve got a lot of color and layout tweaking I’d like to do, but I’ve run up against one major issue…

What to do for the header image? I’ve pondered it for awhile now, and any input anyone has would be greatly appreciated. I have tried several pieces of my own artwork, but none of them seem to fit the 1020 x 145 pixel size that I need. I’m hoping one of my readers has a brainwave, because my own brain is still fried from the holiday this weekend. Dodging green mortar fireworks was not particularly what I had in mind for “fun,” hehe.

For those of you on RSS Feeds or email, check out the new layout here: JoieArt.net

It’s certainly been awhile since I’ve updated, but I want to let everyone know that I’m not dead. I’ve been dealing with a lot of things, but mostly I’ve been recovering from a rather severe injury and haven’t had time to do a lot of art (much less update my blog). For those curious: I will be fine, I just need some physical therapy and healing time.

Vinny #1 did not quite make it to HeroesCon with the writers, but it is just days away from being sent to the printer– I’m so excited! More info tomorrow. Just thought it might be good to warm the old blog back up with a short post about where I’ve been hiding.

I’m posting tonight with some fantastic news! For a very long time, I’ve wanted the domain name JoieArt.com, and it’s finally mine! When I was coming up with a website domain name years ago, JoieArt.com was unavailable, so I ended up with (as some of you very longtime readers will remember) FracturedFantasy.com. That was my website for over three years, until it occurred to me to see if JoieArt.net was open.

Of course I wanted to satisfy my curiosity, and found out that JoieArt.com was registered to someone through an Australian domain registrar. In all the years that it had been registered, I never did see any content on it. I finally got some guts and put a domain backorder watch on it fifteen days before the registration expired. I was really saddened when it got renewed, and forgot all about it.

Then, about a week ago, I got an email from my own registrar telling me that the domain I’ve been watching had its renewal reversed, and was going into a redemption period. SCORE! I got even luckier when just three days ago the domain was released and my backorder watch nabbed it for me. It was like being a little kid and being given a GIANT lollipop. Oh yes.

So now I’ve got both JoieArt.com AND JoieArt.net. Good times. I just have to decide which I want to be my main domain name, and which one I want to just be a forwarding domain. I kinda like .Net, personally. Anyone have an opinion?

And for anyone keeping tabs, FracturedFantasy.com is still registered to me, and yes it does point to this website now. I’m such a domain hog.

I made a Joie Brown fan page on Facebook.com. Gee, I know that may sound narcissistic, but it was done for the purpose of spreading the word about my website! So if you’re on Facebook, feel free to add me!

Joie’s Fan Page on Facebook