The History of Heresmary.com
Version 11 - Video Game Hamsters
My first layout that used a lot of photoshop! I based this layout on a bunch of video game characters from games that I play. I focused on using lots of colour and adding a lot of new content for visitors. This site had quite a few new things: dropdown menu, display of PSN Card, tabs to show TV shows and games I'm playing, more interactions etc.
Version 10 - Study Pals
This layout was based on some characters that I created by drawing them on paper. It was the first time that I had tried creating characters in a different way than computer graphically. I drew them, scanned them in, saved them as monochrome BMPs and then tidied them up and added colour. For the background I also did something unusual for me; I took a photograph of a nice piece of wood and altered it to get the right colouring then formed it into the background image for the header and borders of the site. The rest of the site stayed the same because this layout was another skin for the same layout.
Version 9 - Winter Kisses
This was the first official skin of heresmary.com. When I figured out how to skin the site using some simple javascript and swapping in different CSS documents, I rearranged all of the files so that this would work in the most efficient way possible. This layout had the same basic look of The Sawbewwy Twiplets, but with different styling. It is based on two Inuits that I created especially for Winter '06.
Version 8 - The Sawbewwy Twiplets
I wanted a more summer-oriented layout, and decided to go with the summery fruit strawberries. I used the word sawbewwy as an alternative to make it more original and cute. I thought it would be interesting basing the site around more than one character. The original design was different to this - the outline of the strawberries was darker, their faces looked different, they had different themes and a texture to them. I wasn't completely satisfied with that though and I remade The Sawbewwy Twiplets a month or two later.
Version 7 - Milo The Marshmallow
This layout was based on a character called Milo the Marshmallow. I was pondering over what to base a new layout on, and AJ gave me the idea of a marshmallow blowing bubbles. I loved his idea and thought it was so cute and unique, so I created the character and named him Milo the Marshmallow. The main iframe was centered on his body, and there were bubbles to the left that were the main navigation and they popped when you clicked on them.
Version 6 - Love Is All That Matters
I decided to give the site a more sophisticated look. I based it around the words "Love is all that matters". I used an old photograph of a rose from my back garden (atleast 10yrs old) and based the website around that. When I did this I got the idea for a page on the site with photographs of scenes and flowers, giving others images to base their new layouts on.
Version 5 - Tatty Blue
I based this version on the picture that I created using paint while I was in College one day, by studying a toy called "Tatty Blue" given to me by A.J. It was a yellow and blue scheme that I wanted to be very simple. I changed the navigation from previous layouts because I was culminating so many pages and new things that I couldn't fit it all into anything but a drop-down menu!
