FAQ

How can I contact you & see what you’re up to?
You can e-mail me, find me on twitter, see my pictures on flickr, check out what I’m reading, watch my video blogs, or find me on twenty something bloggers.

I’m thinking about working with you for my blog design, where do I start?
Send me an e-mail atkylaroma@gmail.com, I can send you pricing details on anything from a full blog design down to a banner for your etsy store. You can also view the Freckled Nest portfolio here, or peek at mine here.

Where on the prairies are you from?
I’m from Winnipeg Manitoba, which is directly north of North Dakota.

What breed are your dogs?

Ash & Mal are Schipperkes (pronounced Skipper-keys or Shipper-keys). They are brothers and are full grown at 18 lbs each. Ash is named for Bruce Campbell’s character in the Evil Dead movies, and Mal is named for Malcolm Reynolds, the ship’s captain in Joss Whedon’s TV series Firefly.

Do you offer sponsored giveaways or paid product reviews?

No, while I have had sponsors for my blog at times I don’t do paid posts or sponsored giveaways. I don’t want you to second guess about my enthusiasm for what I talk about here, so I just don’t go there.

Say, how do you host mix tapes, do the design stuff you do, take nice pictures, and find fonts that look like that?

I’m 100% self taught, so I can’t point you to any easy fixes but I highly recommend looking around online for tutorials, taking classes to get a solid foundation of the basics and making lots of mistakes (The figuring it out is more than half the fun, I promise!).

There are lots of great resources just waiting for you to find them. A few of my favourites for design work are Photoshop Girl & You Stuck at Photoshop, and Pugly Pixel. For photography I can’t recommend Digital Photography School highly enough, I’ve never taken a photography class in my life and DPS has answered all of my artsy & technical questions. Love them!

What kind of hardware do you use to make this blog happen?

For my photography I use an old Canon Rebel XTi. My first fancy lens was a nifty fifty lens & I just got a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 that I use pretty much exclusively now. I love playing photoshoot with my friends and work as a second shooter on a few weddings each summer.

For my design work I use a Macbook Pro & Photoshop CS3. I make some of own clip art and brushes from found objects & I love Pugly Pixel and Minitoko for their clips art too.

For my blog, I’m a self hosted wordpress user and I adore it because it lets me tinker with the gears. I’m hosted with Netfirms think they’re nifty. My favourite wordpress plugins are scheduled posts, future calendar, protected post personalizer and maintenance mode.