Dayna.me » Layouts

A Brand New Start for 2012

Dayna — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:56:45 +0000

This is going to be my first post in 7 months so please pardon me if I’m shooting randomly. I’m pretty sure no one’s going to be reading this but just for my own references in the future: As some might know, the past year had been a very difficult year for me and I just wanted to thank all the angels in my life who has see me through these times. I really appreciate how you guys are here for me, picking up my calls at 2am and simply just listening to me. Without your support, I might still be on Titanic sinking… fast.

That aside, I am getting back on my feet and getting my blog back on track! This layout has been hovering around for the past 3 – 4 months and I have finally managed to sit down and work on it. Minimalistic – not my usual style but it really hits close to home. Life is as simple it can gets – friends, family, food, tea & just simply enjoying myself, what’s more in life to ask for?

While I was away, so much has happened AKA lots of upgrades were required both to WordPress and plugins. I am still fiddling with what’s new on the latest version though I highly doubt I will be needing any of the new features (if any). Meanwhile, I got most of the bugs floating around fixed. I did not carry out cross browsers testing so shoot if you noticed anything quirky!

There are so many things I wanted to blog about, to remember in the future and this will be the first. 2011 was the most valuable lesson in my life thus far and I can now tell the world, I’m a better and happier person and most importantly, I am myself.

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Back from the dead

Dayna — Sun, 29 May 2011 14:11:43 +0000

Aloha! I was invisible (went MIA) from the web community since last November/December. Well, to keep things short, I took a much needed break to socialise in the “real world”. Surprisingly, I managed to keep to the 6 months time frame I had given myself to chill, relax and simply not think/code/draw (except when I’m working of course). I was still active on Facebook and occasionally on Twitter though.

My Photoshop was also collecting dust and spiders during the past half a year. I suppose this “Welcome back from the dead” layout isn’t one of my best but at least it’s something new. =p As usual, there isn’t any major changes to the overall structure of the layout. I did not carry out any cross-browser compatibility test due to the lack of time. It will be good if you can let me know if you notice any issues.

Short updates of what happened during the past 6 months:

Permed my hair for the second time!
Popped by Taiwan for the first time in early May
Officially graduated from UOL Bachelor of Science in Accounting and Finance with Second Class (Upper) Honours
Pampered myself with new gadgets: Canon S95 and the iPad 2
Lots of shopping trips with mum and my lovely girls

As the saying goes, a picture speaks a 1,000 words…

1000 words of the past 6 months

I look forward to getting back to blogging soon. I hope.

New layout: Back to Basic – Sakura

Dayna — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:03:39 +0000

As promised, a new layout after my exams! I would consider this layout as one of the simplest I have made over the past 2 years. This design strays away from my usual cute and colourful style. There are no kawaii cartoon (or panda for that matter) characters nor bright rainbow colours. I find this change very refreshing but I’m not sure if others feel that way too. It made use of just pastel colours and the entire design revolves around the Sakura flower.

This layout is inspired by both the art and soundtrack of the animé Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan. I am totally in love with this animé especially the art – beautiful cherry blossoms featured in many scenes and not to mention learning a bit more about the history of Japan. I have been listening to the soundtrack for a few days before coming up with this design. In conclusion, love or hate?

Scan credit to animepaper.net

Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan - Toshizo Hijikata

Click here to view the embedded video.

My latest web design – Sunny Day

Dayna — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:22:33 +0000

I haven’t been designing much this year except the current layout at Amour Chaleur you are looking at and a few random cartoons and comics. I really like this candy house layout hence it’s going to stay till June when I’ve the time to put together a new one. So I’ve been spending some time during the past month to work on a customised layout for Diana at molemole.sg. She didn’t gave me a theme or anything so it’s just freestyle for me. I’ve only met her once or twice but she seems like a really happy, friendly and cheery person so the huge orange sun seems like a good idea to me.

Molemole.Sg" > Molemole.Sg" >

It’s a beach theme with a bit of woody feeling. It wasn’t the kind of design that I had on Amour Chaleur with splashes of colours all over. I thought it was something different from my usual colour schemes. I love taking on projects like these because every project is a learning experience for me. I get to draw new things I’ve not drawn before, like the coconut tree, slippers and seashells.

I seems to draw the weirdest thing. Bird with a black magician hat on the beach? Definitely not something realistic but then again, cartoons open the door to imagination and the unexplainable. Some may be slightly confused by the header because I have combined the sky, ocean and land together. I reckon if you are looking far away from a beach, you will somehow see the sky right above the sea too! Let’s also just say I’m kind of jealous of the layout because it looks nicer than my candy house. With that said, pop by to molemole.sg and check out the layout live!

Everyone loves candies, do you?

Dayna — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:26:28 +0000

I’ve been so engrossed with fixing this layout that for the first time in weeks, I slept at nearly 4am. o.O I decided a new layout is necessary not because I was bored of the previous one but because I think I need something new to “freshen up” the entire site. This blog hasn’t been very active lately because most of my time had been spent on last minute revisions for the upcoming examinations. I had a few other ideas for the new layout but the “Candy House” idea was my final pick.

New icons

Frequent visitors of my blog would know that I usually don’t change any of the comments design because I’m always at a lack of ideas (okay, I admit I’m lazy). This design is one of the simpler ones without much details. I didn’t have much time on hand to work on this. The entire layout took me about 6 hours and I didn’t do any detailed cross browsers checks either. I did a quick check in Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. It seems all right hence if you notice any issues, please let me know.

Panda King

Regarding this design, I have to admit I’m not a fan of candies or chocolates. Anything sweet is not exactly my cup of tea¹. However, I thought a candy house seems pretty interesting and I’m pretty sure it’s a cosy place to live in. This design is made from lollipops, colourful chocolate M&Ms, strawberries and chocolate sticks, vanilla cream, lots of melted chocolates and my trademark, panda king. No pandas were harm in the process of making this layout. anda: I hope you like it because it’s going to stay till at least April or June.

I’ve also been thinking of ideas for my blogger’s namecard. It’s been on my list of to-do for the past year but I still haven’t started yet. Perhaps I should start jotting down my ideas. What do you think of using this candy design for the namecard? Oh and if both of you are reading this, Terry and Brenda, both of you need to start too! I want one when you are done, okay? :P

I don’t think pandas like sweet stuff as well

New layout for Christmas – Zoo Mania

Dayna — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:17:32 +0000

To celebrate Christmas this season, I have launched a new layout – Zoo Mania. I wasn’t lazy this time and drew the illustration from scratch in Photoshop. Perhaps this is to make up for the previous layout where I dump everything from my old layouts together. Zoo Mania took me around 4 hours to draw the illustration and another 4 hours to code it. Did I mention how much I dislike coding layouts? Drawing is a really enjoyable process but coding is totally the opposite. The debugging process is a headache as well.

Even though you can’t see major changes in the style, I did changed the header styles. I left the comments, page navigation and footer untouched because I like it as it is now. I swear I wasn’t trying to be lazy. :P Before I introduce the main characters of this layout, I would like to thank Scholar for giving me constructive criticism and advice on how to improve this illustration.

Edit on 24 November: I ended up editing the minor style details like the page navigation, read more links, comments navigation and the footer etc because I feel that the previous styles didn’t really match the new theme. It’s more colourful now and looks like a new theme.

Let the introduction begins… …

The Zoo Mania Team

I actually like this layout. It’s been some time since I draw in Photoshop and I really enjoyed the time spend on this. I hope you like it as much as I do.

I’m still alive

Dayna — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:45:23 +0000

I’m still alive and kicking in case anyone though I’ve gone missing. I’m extremely slow in replying to emails these days because I’m busy catching up with my “offline” life. I faced my computer nearly 24 hours a day except when I’m in school. My dad even told me I could just get married to the computer. Of course I’m not going to do that. Chewy wouldn’t like that. :P Chewy came over for dinner and he waited 3 hours while I messed around with the new navigation today (yes, there’s a new design, did you not noticed it?). Hence, I promise I will spend my entire Wednesday with him!

Mini layout redesign

Speaking of the redesign, I redid both the main and footer navigation and added new panda prints to the footer. I noticed I’ve been using rounded corners for my layouts since last December and thus I removed all the round corners as well. Check out the new post meta at the end of every post if you have not. I’ve also switched to a new plugin for sharing posts and redesign (again!) the list of tags, related and popular posts. In addition, I make a small change to the background of the header, no more fluffy white clouds now and it’s a lot less cluttered. Phew! Yes, that’s all the updates I’ve in regards to the layout.

Voting for the Site Glamour Contest has closed and all the articles written by the wonderful participants have been published here. Please feel free to leave any comments or join in the discussion.

New header? It’s the Bim Bim Remix

Dayna — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:20:48 +0000

I was playing with my Photoshop the entire afternoon experimenting with typography. I have never been too bothered about the use of fonts on my website. However, I was inspired to try out something new after seeing some fantastic examples of typographical illustrations by other web designers. The Bim Bim Remix is what I’ve come up with! I’ve only changed the header so the rest of the layout looks exactly the same. I put up a poll on twitter and it’s 9 votes for Bim Bim remix and 3 votes for the previous monster layout. Sorry to all the lovers of the monster layout. Bim Bim Remix wins this round!

Invasion of the unknown!

Dayna — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:39:51 +0000

Surprise! I made this new layout during the past 24 hours, it was inspired by Oridusartic. My twitter followers might have noticed my tweets about this new layout. I don’t usually changed my layout this often but I’ve noticed a few sites with very similar designs to my previous Scrapbook layout. Hence, I decided to draw a new one yesterday. I feel honoured that someone thinks mine is good enough to be duplicated though. I might be using this design for my name cards as well, maybe replacing the devil with my trademark panda, we shall see.

So, why monsters? (Yes, it’s a monster or devil, not a cow, pig, bee or panda) I saw a tweet from Oridusartic with a link to a list of adorable monsters and I decided to try drawing something new. I’ve never drawn a monster before and let me tell you it’s super tough to draw a cute monster. The one in this layout – Blurry is not exactly adorable either. It’s my best shot though. It was without wings initially. Here are some of the different types of wings I’ve drawn for him.

Wings wings and more wings

It has a Chirstmasy feeling, no? The background isn’t very logical as well with lollipops growing on the grass. It’s suppose to be snowing as well. Nevertheless, like what Oridusartic had told me – anything can happen in “our world”. I’m still using the tab navigation style but I flip the words over so that it’s easier to read now. If you look around the website, I didn’t change all of the styles (eg. headers). I still like the old ones, plus I couldn’t think of a better one … yet. I still maintain the notebook style because of the same reason – I still like it.

I would like to express my thanks to Oridusartic, Terry, Liling, Chewy and Huaian for comments and advice before I launched the final layout. =D Credit for the post title goes to James! This layout is extremely random. I’ve no explanations as to why it is snowing when the grass is green. Why are lollipops all over the ground? Why are there shadows when there is no sun?

I have also done cross browser checks on Firefox 3.5.3, Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome 3, Safari 4.0.2 and Opera 10. It should most probably work in the latest browsers and in resolutions of 1024×768 and above. A JavaScript enabled browser is recommended.

Goodbye Bim Bim, Hello to me!

Dayna — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:40:55 +0000

I have finally managed to finish this new layout. Bim Bim shall be missed but I hope you would like the new one as well. This layout was named as “Dear Diary”, the reason is pretty obvious I guess. This layout was designed into a notebook/diary. The merry-go-round was actually a separate illustration that wasn’t meant for this layout but since I like it a lot, I thought why not just put it in as well. This diary has a bit of a scrapbook style as well. I love lace! The little tabs on the right are the navigation. The photo strips on the left are those taken during my 21st birthday. Check out my flickr for more photos.

I know this layout is very pinkish but it’s in my favourite colour. With all the ribbons and lace, I doubt any guys will like this layout but it screams “Dayna” on the entire layout. Dear Diary is the Nth version of the new layout. I have been having a serious case of layout block since the end of my UOL exams so I kept redoing it. It was until 3 days ago I suddenly of this idea of having my online journal looking like a real life diary.

Version N - 1

Merry-go-round

I have done cross browser checks on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera but I’m not sure if it works across all browsers though, it should work in the latest browsers and in resolutions of 1024×768 and above.

Things to do

~~Update 2 WordPress plugins~~ Completed!
Replies to all the 50 over emails in regard to Amour Chaleur
Finish half of the reviews in the queue by the end of this month
~~Draw a small bee to link my Quilting Bee Quilt in the footer~~ Completed!
Find a spot on the layout to put my twitter updates?
Update information about me

I shall do an entry on my birthday in the next few days. Hope everyone like this layout!