New Shoes and Summer Hues

These are my new summer shoes, aren't they cute? I bought them when I was in Sweden, the brand is called Vagabond. I must say I think shoe shops are much better in Sweden than here in England, the shoes are always so extreme here, sky-high stilettos ain't my thing!

On another shoe related note: I was approached on the bus yesterdat by an old man who admired my "Romanesque shoes" (gladiator sandals from last year) and asked if they didn't cost me a fortune? He looked really shocked when I said they are actually in fashion and you can find them anywhere for quite cheap... How sweet!

How To Add Custom Fonts to Your Blog - Guest Post by Mervi

Hi there! It's Mervi here from My Best Friend Jules! I've recently opened my little blog design shoppe Design By Wushka, so I thought it would be fun to make a little blogger tutorial for using custom fonts in your blog. Not too long ago Blogger published a range of new font but if you want to differentiate from those - this tutorial will show you how to make your blog stand out from the crowd.

I put together a quick template that I will now start customizing. There are heaps of cool web fonts available. I recommend using www.kernest.com - they have a nice selection of free fonts, some even free for commercial use. For the blog title, I picked a font called Learning Curve Dashed and for the post titles Learning Curve.

STEP 2

Now go to the Edit HTML section in your dashboard and take a copy of your template, just in case. You can do so by selecting Download full template. Next, you should find <*/head*> in your templates HTML code. You can find it by entering <*/head*> (remove the red asterisks**) in your search field - note that Expand your widget templates needs to be selected. The search will automatically find the code for you.

Then go back to kernest and copy the Learning Curve Dashed Font-face embedded URL (highlighted blue in the screenshot) and paste it between <*/b:template-skin*> and <*/head*>

It should look like this in your code.

Then press save template. Now let's do the same for the post title font Learning Curve. Just copy/paste the embedded URL just like you did for the blog title font. When both codes are in place it should look like this.

STEP 3 - BLOG TITLE

Now let's locate where in the code we need to add the font CSS. Let's locate the blog title first. Type in .Header h1 { in the search field. The code should look like this.

Then go back to kernest and copy the recommended font CSS code, as shown in the screenshot.

Then paste the CSS code below the line, ending rgba (0,0,0,2), in your HTML code. The ready code should look like this.

Now, adjust the line-height from 140% to 100%. This way the font won't take too much space in the layout. Press preview, and you should see the custom font in your blog title as in the screenshot. Then press save.

STEP 4 - POST TITLE

Now let's do exactly the same for the post title. We just need to locate the post title in the code. Type in h3.post-title, .comments h4 { in your search. Then copy the Learning Curve font CSS from kernest and paste it below the line, ending margin .75m 0 0; The ready code should look like this.

Let's again adjust the line-height from 140% to 100% - exactly like we did for the blog title. Then press save.

STEP 5 - ADJUST FONT SIZE

Now that the custom fonts are ready, you can adjust the font size from the Template Designer. Go to Advanced and select Blog title. This time, I chose the font size as 80 px. A quick note here - now that you've edited the actual code you can't see the new fonts in the Template Designer. To change your blog title font, you need to go back and edit the code. I also decided to adjust the post title font size to 30 px. And that's it! Now you've got a custom fonts for your blog and post titles. This is what it looks like now.

EXTRA STEP

If you want to do the same for you widget titles, you just need to locate the font: $(widget.title.font); in the code and copy/paste the kernest font CSS as follows.

And again, adjust the line-height to 100%. Also, because Learning Curve is a handwriting font and the widget titles are in uppercase the titles aren't that readable. So I decided to adjust text-transform: uppercase; to text-transform: lowercase; so that the titles are now more reader-friendly.

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please just drop me a note by email and I'm happy to help!

Thanks, Mervi

Winner of the Sponsor Spot Giveaway - With a Surprise!

Hello dear friends,

Here comes a little surprise to show how much I appreciate every single one of you; instead of one winner of the sponsor spot giveaway we're gonna have three! Yay! I found it so hard to only pick one so I decided to give away one medium ad and two small ones! The winners were all chosen by random with random.org

The winner of the medium ad is Abbey of The Inglenook. I'm so pleased Abbey won because I really love this blog, her photos are beautiful!

The winner of one small ad each is Amy of I am Adorkable and Mel of Thrifted. Amy is a dear old blog buddy of mine, and Mel is a fresh new encounter so that's awesome too!

Congratulations girls! If you could email me your buttons that would be great! Abbey: yours is 225x110 pixels, Amy and Mel: yours need to be 110x110 pixels.

Swedish Midsummer Bonanza in Hyde Park

Happy belated Midsummer's or "Glad Midsommar" as it's called in Swedish! I had a blast with my friends who came over from Sweden for the weekend.

The Midsummer celebrations in Hyde Park was bigger than ever before this year! There were loads more people than last year, around 800 Swedes came to eat, drink, dance and have fun!

My lovely friend Sofia.

Arman and James looked cute in flowers too!

We had a picnic with potatoes and sill (herring) which is a traditional Swedish food to have on Midsummer...

fruit...

and blueberry cheesecake muffins, which is not Swedish at all, but it's Sofia's favourite!



On Midsummer's all the girls look so pretty, it is tradition to wear these kinds of flower wreaths.

And this little girl looked so adorable in a traditional Swedish folk dress.

Time for the Swedish dancing around the flower pole (which I didn't photograph because it wasn't very impressive this year).

James was getting into it...

And so was I! We danced with lots of people we didn't know because everybody has to hold hands. Next to me was a bunch of Korean girls, they were really excited and confused at the same time :) So much fun!

Calling For July Sponsors + Sponsor Spot Giveaway!

I am now accepting sponsors for the month of July! With a rapidly growing readership and very affordable rates 'A Piece of Lisa' is the perfect place to advertise your business, website, blog or Etsy shop.

Over the last two months A Piece of Lisa's visitors have increased by 200% and it's gaining new readers every day!

If you're interested in sponsoring A Piece of Lisa you can check out my sponsorship info here or email me at lisa_edoff@hotmail.com

Sponsor Spot Giveaway!

Just because I adore you all so much, I am also giving away one medium sponsor ad for free! The medium ads are 225x110 pixels and include a sponsor feature with introduction text, links and image.

To enter leave a comment with a link to the blog/shop/website you want to advertise.

For extra entries: blog, tweet or write on facebook with a link to this post.

The winner will be announced on Tuesday the 28th of June.

Midsummer Plans + Foodie Tips

Hello foxy friends!

Today I'm preparing for more visitors, yay! This time it's my friend Sofia and her boyfriend Arman who are coming over for a long weekend to celebrate Midsummer's with us. Midsummer is a Swedish summer holiday celebration in the end of June, Midsummer's eve is the longest day during the year in Sweden, so at 11pm it's still light outside!

I'm so excited about my friends coming over, Sofia came for Midsummer last year and we had so much fun! We are going to celebrate with lots of other Swedes in Hyde Park on Saturday, they organize a huge picnic party every year there, I will post lots of pics next week! In the meantime, here are some from last year...

I'm going to make blueberry cheesecake today, because it's Sofia's favourite. I'm gonna try and make small ones in muffin forms though, so it will be easy to bring them to the picnic.

Image via Gourmantine's Blog.

Talking about yummy stuff... Have you seen the website Foodgawker? It's a website where food bloggers can submit recipe links and an image of their creation. Everything looks delicious, so much inspiration! Check it out!

Winner of the LOVE Dress Giveaway!

The winner is... (drumroll)

Comment no. 18 - Giselle! Yay, big congrats to you Giselle! I hope you will like your "birthday present" :) Please email me to claim your prize.

Thank you to everyone who entered!