Scandinavian Sparks Blog

A school reunion is either awesome or it bombs. There is no in-between as you know and remember too much about each other. But they are usually awesome as the old relationships tend to blossom back up and carry the party themselves.

As long as you have a fun theme, good friends, and good music, everything else will fall into place. As long as you keep rivals apart that is. Old friendships blossom back up but rivalry may rear its ugly head as well. If so, smack them, and tell them to act their age. All will be fine.

School Reunion Invitations

Regardless of what theme your school reunion is going to be, you do have to send out invitations. What you do not have to do is send them through snail mail in hopes for the best. You can send them out through the web after posting details on your school reunion on the web for all to see. Sounds simple enough? It is.

School Reunion – Incredible Invitations Made by Your Own Little Fingers

You can use Web 2.0 technologies to easily create a web page about your school reunion that makes everyone think you are a programming guru, even though you’re not. The multi media tools are so easy to use anyone can use them, even the class dunce.

Create a web page with the theme of your reunion, pictures of the entire class, music that was in style when you were in high school and video of the homecoming dance or senior prom. Place comment boxes of sayings that were popular then and remind everyone who had the best car, the earliest curfew, did the most stunts, died their hair green and got expelled, and who never got a car from their parents.
School Reunion – Invitations that Connect the Past, Present, and Future

When you send the invitations out to your former classmates, they will receive electronic email invitations with a web link to click. That will take them to your page where you are going to evoke all kinds of emotions with your displays of the past and plans for the near future party.

They’ll see their names on the guest list with pictures of them in high school. They’ll get a good laugh and will poke fun of each other in person over those pictures. Here they can respond if they’ll attend or not or if they’re unsure. Then they’ll start communicating with you and everyone else.
When they realize they can communicate and network with old classmates, you’ll never be able to get them off the computer. You’ve actually opened up a world that interactively connects the past to the present and the future. That goes beyond powerful.

You and your group will also be able to Network with other school reunion groups. Keep the page going as long as you want. Visit Events Listed and get connected today. Bridge the spans of time and evoke and endless future of networking.

About the Author:

Simon Ford is an Internet Entrepreneur who specializes in Event Launch Marketing applying social media and internet marketing strategies. “he initially started writing to attract traffic to his websites and has since become hooked”. If the content of this article interests you, you may be interested to visit his website to learn more about the latest strategies for designing electronic invitations and how to publish your own multi media rich web page designed to commemorate special events like school reunion for you to network it amongst those closest to you.

Barbeque party invitations mean somebody’s grilling up some great barbeque. Tell us when and where and we’ll be there. Just kidding. But we can help you give your barbeque lovin’ guests the skinny on the when, the where, and much more.

You’ve got the party planned, got the food, the sauce, the tongs, and the pit. Now what? How about the barbeque party invitations? You wouldn’t want all of that food to go to waste, would you? Then invite some people over, man!

Make your invitations yourself for free through Events Listed. With over 60 multi media tools that are so easy to use anyone can do it, you can make the perfect barbeque party invitations. Add your flair and your personal touch and spice them up exactly to your liking.

You actually create one web page that acts as your invitation and communication portal. You create this page in a Web 2.0 environment that includes the web tools. Completely personalize your page to your barbeque party theme. Include pictures, videos, audios, surveys, and more all personalized to your theme. Add some music and some videos of some world-class grill masters.

Be sure to post the date and time of the party and any special instructions for your guests, such as “BYOB.” You can also post a poll for your guest to vote on which foods will get barbequed. Why not use the task manager to assign side dishes, deserts, and drinks to your guests? And the ice. Someone needs to bring ice.

Party Invitations that are Finger-Lickin’ Good

You will electronically invite your guests to your page by sending emails with direct links to your page. Once they open the page, they’ll see the guest list as well as the RSVP status in real time. They’ll also be able to respond to your invitation and see how others have responded. They’ll be able to see who will be wearing aprons, who can’t stand the heat of the kitchen, and who hasn’t responded yet.

Your guests can also start networking together online as soon as they wish and you can even promote more networking by cross referencing other barbeque party online groups. Hey, you may end up with some great recipes that are finger-lickin’ good.

For those who can’t attend, they can enjoy photos, micro blogs, video feeds, and more being implemented during the party. Anyone can be at the virtual party, even if they are on the other side of the world. They just can’t taste the food is all. Too bad you can’t send the smell through the web either or you could make them froth at the mouth for some of your barbeque. Dang!

Automated Party Invitation Reminders

You can also send out preset, automated email reminders about the party date and time as Father Time slims down the days and hours to your party. You can also post a budget right on your web page and manage it from there. Awesome.

Go ahead and use these Web 2.0 technologies to your advantage and create the most unique barbeque party web page you can. It’s free and it’s easy and you’ll get the perfect, interactive invitation. Now will the food come out perfect? That’s entirely up to you, friend. Entirely up to you.

About the Author:

Simon Ford is an Internet Entrepreneur who specializes in Event Launch Marketing applying social media and internet marketing strategies. “he initially started writing to attract traffic to his websites and has since become hooked”. If the content of this article interests you, you may be interested to visit his website learn more about the latest strategies for party planning and publishing multi media rich web pages for events, strategies you can adopt to make any event like student parties or kids birthday’s more memorable.

Many events have happened in the 20th Century, the space race, the birth of rock and roll and the civil rights movement. We, the human race have a lot to be proud of. While we may not always make the right choices, we as a race have been extremely creative in all areas of our lives from art to music and acting.

Art came to life in the 20th Century as it became thrust into the mainstream as more everyday people became interested in art and as many couldn’t afford originals they wanted prints. In the past art was reserved for royalty and the rich, where as in the 20th Century art became more readily available as well as more acceptable for normal people.

Beryl Cook is an artist hailing from Plymouth, Devon in the UK who sadly died earlier on in 2008. She was originally from Surrey and spent time travelling as a performer before having a job in the fashion industry and then settling down in Plymouth with her husband John Cook. Her artwork is well known for featuring depictions of every day life and the people of Plymouth. She would produce colourful Beryl Cook prints that focus on the things everyday people do, such as waiting at a bus stop or the bin men collecting the rubbish.

Doug Hyde was born in in the early 70’s and he has made big waves in the art community for someone so young as the BBC named him the UK’s Best Selling Artist. He uses a simple but effective technique, he is inspired by the emotions he has felt in certain situations and this is what has made Doug Hyde prints so popular. As well as prints he is also a popular sculptor, producing sculptures that follow the same themes and often feature similar characters featured in his canvas artwork.

Peter Smith is an artist from Mansfield near Nottingham. The career path of Peter Smith has been a varied path working as a information technology programmer and a graphic designer in the fashion market. Peter Smith prints look like they are inspired by the likes of Dali as a portion of his artwork features surreal ideas and imagery. Peter Smith prints often feature animal characters sometimes called Zeppos,that look like a mix between a zebra and a hippo. These animal creations have become very popular in both print and sculpture forms.

Pencil Drawing Tips on Value Balance

Values, by definition, are degrees of darkness and lightness. Every visual artist must develop their value sense. To help with this, I suggest making a five-value scale. Draw five boxes and make the first on the left totally black while leaving the last one white.

Then, fill up the middle one with a value in between black and white. This is the so-called “halftone”. Next, fill in the second box from the left with a value that lies between black and the halftone which yields a “dark gray”. Similarly, the second box from the right is filled with a value lying in between white and the halftone. This value is called “light gray”.

These five values are enough for a start and can do wonders for your artwork. Practice these five values until you can recall them instantly.

When planning a drawing composition it is not only important to balance the position of the shapes but also the values relative to the focal point.

1. One way to better discern value differences is to squint. You loose sight of much of the detail so you see the contrasts much better.

2. Make sure that large areas of darks or lights are balanced within the frame of the boundaries of your ground. Trust your intuition and do not forget to include the negative spaces in your evaluation.

Balance does not mean the same amount of lights and darks. You may, for example, want to create a very dark drawing without any light. Still, even in this situation you need to balance the different shades of dark.

3. When planning a value composition it is advisable to first lay out 3 or 5 big shapes. Using the 5-value scale, give each of the shapes a particular value but make sure you end up with a good overall balance relative to your focal point both in terms of position and of value.

Later you can refine and work on a smaller and smaller scale while still maintaining a balance. And squint until it hurt!

Note that, for some reason, choosing an odd number of shapes seems to be more pleasing to the eye than an even number.

4. In the case you are drawing a realistic work, you should always be aware of how the light falls on the objects. You do not have much of a choice when it comes to drawing the variety of values produces by the light source.

You can simplify the totality of the values into the values of the 5-value scale. Also, you can make sure that the resulting light pattern is an interesting one. If possible, you can relocate the light source and check out different lightings.

However, once you have decided on a certain light pattern you must be quite accurate in realizing it as is, particularly in the case of pencil portraits. The viewer’s eye is very sensitive to misplaced values.

5. The use of thumbnail sketches is a good way to experiment with different value compositions. They do not take long to create and give you a good idea of the value distribution and the value balance or the lack thereof.

These few guidelines should be enough to give you a good start in handling values. Still, the key is always to observe reality as accurately as you can.

How to draw with pencil and beginners oil painting tips published on these great professional web sites.

For the digital video gaming art in action - watch Diablo 3 characters videos.

Pencil Drawing Tips on the Rule of Thirds and Focal Points

The Rule of Thirds is an easy graphical method which provides a useful approximation for the so-called Golden Section.

The Golden Section - The Golden Section is the division of a length into two parts such that the ratio of the shorter to the longer parts equals the ratio of the longer part to the whole length.

This leads to the proportion of 1 over the irrational number 1.618, called the Golden Mean. This mysterious ratio turns up quite a lot in nature and is therefore pleasing to the eye. It has been used in art and architecture for centuries.

The Rule of Thirds - There are exact mathematical methods to produce an exact Golden Section but for the practical purpose of determining a suitable focal point for a drawing we can get away with a much simpler but approximate method called the Rule of Thirds.

The Rule of Thirds starts with a rectangular piece of paper. It divides the rectangle into 3 equal parts vertically and then also horizontally. This yields 4 intersection points called “hotspots”.

It is easily seen that the Golden Mean is being approximated by 1/1.66 which is close enough to the Golden Section for government work.

The idea is that each of the 4 hotspots can now be used as a suitable focal point for your drawing. In de West people usually enter a drawing visually from the left. Therefore, the top and bottom hotspots on the right are preferable. This requires the viewer to traverse the entire left of the drawing to get to the focal point.

Another approximate method to determine a Golden Section is to first draw a diagonal of the rectangle. Then through any corner of the rectangle you can draw a line perpendicular to the diagonal. The intersection point of this line and the diagonal can suitably serve as a focal point.

There are many more compositional types which are pleasing to the eye. Here are four more:

1. The O-type - In this compositional type the objects are arranged in the shape of an O. This circular composition keeps the viewer’s eye inside the circle. The focal point should be somewhere within the open space of the O.

2. The S-type - As expected, the objects form the shape of an S. This compositional style is very graceful and fluid. The focal point can be taken in either of the open spaces of the S form.

3. The L-type - This compositional style has objects along a vertical line on one side of the paper and objects along the bottom line of the paper. In other words the relevant objects form an L. You can locate your focal point somewhere in the open area of the L or somewhere along the vertical stem.

4. The U-type - In this style the objects form a U shape. The space inside the U is a good place to put the focal point and also provides a rest place for the eye.

There are many more compositional styles or types each with their suitable focal points. But the above collection should give you a good start.

How to draw with pencil and beginners oil painting tips shared on these 2 great web sites done by a professional pencil and paintings artist.

A little different kind of art - Diablo 3 classes in action in these videos.

I believe we live in a country that is steeped in humour, from the grimmest of times where each day was a bit of a chore there is always a less fraught take to a seemingly dull and hard life. Sounds a bit heavy you might say but as I was trekking round my local gallery I saw some of the work by Paul Horton.

The way I would put into words the feel of Paul Horton’s work is that of the straight man in a farse, that poised moment ahead of the laugh. Described by many as a modern day Lowry, his work shines out, taking pretty grim scenes and changing them into something homely and peaceful.

Paul Horton developed at Bournville school of Art where he studied drawing and painting, he then went into the printing industry, until in 1997 he went full time with his artwork, putting all of his efforts into the thing he most enjoyed. travelling a long way from the boy inspired by his art’s teacher to one using his craft to such a large degree.

Paul Horton’s work just draws you in with its peaceful colours and gentle “action” scenes letting you feel at ease while you, absorb the many aspects of the picture rich in pathos and symbolism. Paul Horton likes to imagine his art as opening the door for people to go into his landscape of creativity and make of it what they will. I think it achieves this but also leaves you wanting to see another view from his grimly optimistic cityscape.

Seaside resorts in the UK is some how lacking if it hasn’t got any pictures of Beryl cooks work. Beryl Cook had been producing gorgeous funny images of overweight men and women since the 1950’s. And her paintings, prints and postcards have some how seeped into the British consciousness, striding through the modern spotlight of personal size and revealing the enjoyable side to a normal England filled with enjoyable scenes and normal characters.

Beryl Cook Prints are very popular, its a long way from when she began. Her son John cook was born in 1950 and some years after Beryl Cook used some of his paints and began painting a picture for herself. Beryl Cook enjoyed art so much that she just couldn’t stop, and from that time on we have had the joy of her work. Beryl Cook found it really difficult to put her prints into galleries, as galleries thought there was not much of a market for her funny pictures, but once her work became available for sale they sold very fast.

Beryl Cook had her first exhibition at London’s Portal Gallery and her work was a huge success with her work completely selling out. I think what was so marvellous about Sheryl Cook’s pieces was the thing that she only painted scenes that had caused her to laugh or got her thinking about a certain topic. This made sure that every one of her creations were created with love and care that only shows when you are making a thing that you are enjoying making. The late Beryl Cook produced some amazing work that moves on in her art and prints and is loved by the planet over.

I was round a friend of mines home last week and the topic of art came up. To my surprise I found he had built up quite a assortment of Tim Bulmer sketches and prints. He told me he just adored the humour and wit in each picture, which made him laugh each time he walked along the landing or glanced up from his coffee in the day.

I looked into the work of Tim Bulmer his art and prints, to find out some more about the artist behind the humour. One quote that I found from him appeared to have a insight into his take on things, Tim Bulmer stated “I am fascinated by the incredible diversity of life and am constantly inspired by the fact that it always seems a whisker away from farce”. When it came to his work he simply said that “wry observation of life and an unwillingness to take anything seriously more or less summed up his work”

Tim Bulmers chance arrived when he was employed at a gallery and the proprietors allowed him to display pieces of his work. The initial assortment of his artwork very quickly became very popular and he managed to leave his day job and start sketching and painting all the time. Tim Bulmer was awarded the fine art trade guild’s best selling print artist award in 2001, indicating his fame and general appeal.

I find when you look at Tim Bulmers pieces that “Farce” is frequently the thing that jumps to mind with lots of the situations taking the Michael out of situations political or personal that because of arrogance or ignorance still prevail in our everyday.

For all of the diaper bags out there, Storksak offer a high quality durable bag that is well engineered, well designed, and celebrities love them. Featuring a thermo insulated bottle holder, changing mat, key ring clip and detachable mirror, as well as other individual compartments, the quality design of Storksak is obvious. Featuring fine leather and adorned with hardware, the bag is put together well, ensuring durability through the years. Lastly, celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt often parade around, sporting their storksaks. Lets face it, there s not to much more you could you ask for in a diaper bag.

Are you a nice fan to your favored stars or actors? Would it be nice if you can take your affection for a superstar to the next level? How about become an official fan? It may sound funny to place such as yourself into an official class. But, it is definitely fitting. Almost every superstar has their own Fan clubs. Thus, no matter what you want to search for, a fan club can be easily found and joined. Normally, Fan clubs offer web sites with interesting entertainment centers information on the person or book, as well as trivia and information on meet and greets. So if you want to learn more about Anthony Quinn or Avril Lavigne news, you should use the following methods to find a fan club that you can join.

If the superstar is fairly famous, they would probably have their official fan club. By visiting their website, you can search any link that allows you to join. Official fan clubs normally have a monthly news update for you to keep up on what the superstar is doing. As a member, you may even have special access to their members-only stores that sell stuffs like watches, t-shirts or items that you couldn’t buy otherwise. Membership is usually free, but it may vary. For example, there could be a one-time charge that includes memorabilia such as posters. It differs from club to club, so figure out more from their site.

As a member, you will probably not have any commitments. All you have to do is sit back and appreciate the benefits of being in the fan club. However, take note of this, when you join an unofficial fan club, you may have to bring in something. For example, to become a part of it they may ask you to supply an interview or picture that they don’t have yet. These groups provide much more information on whatever celebrity you are looking for, but may be difficult to find or stickier to join.

In order to join a fan sites or fan clubs, online search is your best ways . Just type in the name of the person you love, the search engines will give you a multitude of results, and likeliness are that most of them will be dedicated to the recognition of their work.