Everything Button

Voila, another tutorial! In this one I will walk you through how to get a snazzy button of your own. No thread required. And please note the pretty image; it was incredibly hard to find one that my font colors could be seen on.

~What They Are~

Buttons. They're not the kind shown in the picture above, so sorry :) They are pretty, custom squares that when you click them, boom, they take you to a blog. Mine is my sidebar and I hope you like it, because I'm going to show you how to make one exactly like it. Just not with my picture, please.

~Why You Should Have One~

Just like with Favicons, I find buttons are super handy. While they don't really round out your blog like Favicons do, they make your blog more accessible. Do you know how many of your internet friends have Favorite Blog pages? A lot. And they want a button to put there. So, if you have one, you're going to get more exposure as a blogger. That's always a good thing.

~How to Make One~

If you already have one, you don't have to read any further, but thanks anyway :)

I had no idea how to do this for a while. I knew I wanted a button, but I just never took the time to look it up. And then when Jonathan was parading his shiny new one, I realized that you click "Generate Your Button Code" underneath the button and follow the steps. It's that easy! So this tutorial will be for the buttons with the code that you steal. I don't know how to make or utilize the others yet :)

So have you clicked generate yet? Do so. This will launch the necessary website (www.mycoolrealm.com) in another tab. Go ahead and input your web name and path name, just like it wants.

Now I'm going to show you how to get your image URL.

Open Blogger and create a new post. Insert the picture you would like to use for button (again, I use PicMonkey for editing, etc). You will want the image to already be the desired dimensions- usually a square. Now, right click the picture and choose "open in link new tab."

The gobbledy-gook that appears in the search bar is your image's URL. Copy that and paste it into the code generator. Notice the string of random letters in the third line now? Yes, that's it.

So now, you get to customize. Click the "Help me find out" button for container type and use whatever it says to. I left every other option on its default, because I had customized my picture the way I wanted it previously. And go ahead with the representation. It's polite and handy for other bloggers. Then click preview. As long as it looks the way you want it to, go ahead and select "get code" and copy it.

Go back to Blogger, select your website, and go to Layout. I put my button in my sidebar, so add the HTML/Java Script gadget there. Paste your generated code that you copied and save.

Preview your blog to make sure it turned out the way you wanted it to. If not, go back and do the necessary customizations. If so, you're all set. Hit "Save arrangement" and you're done.

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Hopefully all of that made sense. I want all of you to have shiny new buttons by the end of the week! Let me know if this was helpful and I'll walk you through any problems you have. Good luck!!

Mock Cover and Real Blurb Release

I wasn't planning to post today, but you know what? I'm going out of town in about 20 minutes, so I figured I'd probably better do something. The chances of me getting another post in before next week is unlikely. So, I decided to release my mock cover and blurb for my novel Martin Hospitality.

First, the blurb, because that will fix an idea of the story in your head that you can use to assess my cover :)

Gemma Ebworthy is eighteen, pregnant, and alone. And now that she's been evicted, she finds herself sleeping in a barn, never dreaming that tomorrow could bring kindness of a life-changing magnitude.

The Martins aren't your typical family--even for rural Kansas. With more kids than you can count on one hand and a full-time farm, Gemma must make a lot of adjustments to fit in. But despite their many differences, Gemma finds herself drawn to this family and their radical Christian faith. When her colorful past comes to light, will the Martins still want to provide for her future?

It's so much better than my first draft, and I hope it encourages all of you guys to write your own blurbs (if you haven't yet). It's not that bad. And it's really fun to share. Any feedback, negative or positive?

Now for the cover:

Yes? No? Does it click or resound? While it's not ideal (because you can hardly read my name, etc), it's not bad. I like it because it gives you the setting and the journey vibe with the path. I also like it because there's no person on the front of it. That's one of my pet peeves and tends to be a thing for the Christian Contemporary genre :) However, this is the only idea I have had for a cover. So if anything else strikes you, let me know and I'll draw up another one. No I did not draw this, it's edited from Pinterest.

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That's it! Let me know what you thought (in all honesty). If you want find out more about this story or any of my others, I just got Pinterest collages up on My Writings page. Hopefully I'll catch up on reading some of y'all's posts while I'm gone :) You can follow my travels on Twitter. Like Wicked tomorrow night with my aunts. *screams* Have a great week!