In Love with Coral (and a CHEAP way to make your own) and Other Randomness

OKL is having a sale on coral items for the home today - I'm not sure all of the prices are great, but some things are really cute.  I LOVE coral - here are some things around my house that I've added recently:

(And it tugs my heart to look at those fat fat cheeks of my little guy in the photos so many years ago!!  Doesn't he look like Marlon Brando in the Godfather in that first one? Haha)

I got most of mine at Home Goods, but even there some of them were $50.  It sounds like a lot, but they are HEAVY and on nice acrylic bases.

But here's a tip I heard of how to make your own: Go to Pet Smart or any pet store and buy the cheap coral meant for fish tanks. Then spray paint it any color you want.  I had never seen acrylic bases for sale until I opened my store. I have a few (here), but honestly I think you crafty folks probably know where to get them cheaper.  Maybe a craft store? 

Here are some coral pieces from Pet Smart - It's hard to see past their ugly colors, but they are $8 and up (link here). Try to imagine them sprayed metallic silver or gold!

Shared at Under the Table & Dreaming, 

Next, I have to share an amazing house I saw today on Houzz.   Check out the chandelier!

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This last thing is for other bloggers --  those of you who come here to see pretty photos and ideas can skip because it's tediously boring!!

I discovered the coolest thing the other day -- Image Mapping.  I went to this site called Image Maps - it's the best mapping tool on the internet for DIY bloggers like me, who are forced to learn code and all sorts of other stuff I never expected to have to learn!  I have been tempted SO many times to just pay someone to do my sidebar, but in retrospect, I've learned so much and I'm glad I did it myself. I never in a million years thought when I started blogging that I would be able to write text code from scratch. Anyway, here is what I just learned about image mapping:

Image mapping, according to Wikipedia, which said it better than I could is: 

In HTML and XHTML, an image map is a list of coordinates relating to a specific image, created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to various destinations (as opposed to a normal image link, in which the entire area of the image links to a single destination). For example, a map of the world may have each country hyper-linked to further information about that country. The intention of an image map is to provide an easy way of linking various parts of an image without dividing the image into separate image files.

So, for example, here is an image map I just made for ways to subscribe (although this is just a photo of it and the links aren't working here):

It is basically a bunch of free follow buttons I found by searching Google (except gfc and linky, which I made myself).  So, I put all of the button images together in word processing, then took a screenshot. Then I imported it into my photo program and cropped it to the right size.

Next, I uploaded that photo to Photo Bucket (the tool to map the image does NOT store your photos, so you have to upload to a public site first).

Next, you go to Mark's site (Image Maps), and grab the image you just uploaded to Photo Bucket and put it in his tool.  Then it's super easy - you draw boxes around each portion that you want to link -- so one box around each circle in my case.  Then there is a box to link each "box", or portion of the whole image, to a different site (Google Friends, Rss, Facebook, etc., in my case).  I'm sure you've seen this a million times in sidebars, especially in the follow images like these.  Lastly, after linking everything, you grab the code and add it to your sidebar, post, or wherever.  SO COOL!!  At least to me - I'm kind of geeky about techy stuff :)  

And Mark, the site owner who made this free tool, is AWESOME. I had questions and emailed him, and he wrote right back and was very helpful. He also has a place to donate because his tool is free. I used it in my sidebar about 6 times, so I contributed (it only seemed fair since I would have had to pay someone otherwise). But you can do it for free if you want.  I did it for all of my store images in my sidebar so I could link each product to it's own page. I love that I can do that!!

So, I wanted to share my new favorite blogging tip, and give Mark's site a little plug because I love it.  I hope you find it as useful as I did!

Thanks for reading!!

I hope you'll visit my store for Rugs, Lighting, Art, Furniture and more: