Lately I have been wanting to join a message board of quality but can’t seem to find one. I have one major message board that I visit regularly but I have been looking for something else to join. Most message boards I come across are ones owned by personal-website owners, and often tend to be ones about websites/graphics/coding which I find to be boring. Sure some of these message boards have other sections unrelated to websites, but I am looking for something totally different. I guess a place where not everyone owns a website or is involved in website design. I guess it is hard to explain but I am after something with more variety, and some place that doesn’t have internet drama such as “OmGz U stolez mii layout”. I also don’t want something that has some sort of “bonus” system where everyone makes dollars, diamonds, gems or points, because it makes everything a competition, and it generally annoys me. Yes I am fussy.

So if anyone has any suggestions for a message board that has one or more of the following things let me know.

1. Isn’t a huge board with over 200 members.
2. Has a variety of topics, and nothing to do with websites/graphics/coding.
3. Has people around my age, maybe in the 15-30 year mark.
4. Not too much e-drama (I know it’s everywhere).
5. Doesn’t have some sort of “bonus” system.

And even if you don’t have a suggestion based on the listed reasons, tell me what message board(s) you do frequent, and why you like them/it so much.

This review was written by Clem of Mobile Reviews

First Impressions

Your layout is bright and cute, but it gives the impression of being squashed up to the left. This illusion is created by the tulips all being on the left. I understand that the blank space looks neat, but it also makes your layout look a little off. However, your layout is neat and uncluttered, which creates a fairly high first impression of your website.

Enter

None.

Layout

The header image is beautiful, and your use of colours is brilliant. I really love your headings and the dates on your blogs. My favourite part, however, is your footer. It’s amazing! I really love how it’s not just the same old straight-bar-with-stripes. *cough cough* I know that sounds a bit hypocritical, but I’m not saying it’s bad; just that yours is something fresh and new.

Content

About Me

The introduction is nice and tells just enough about you to make me want to learn more. However, I’m not getting: A) the random capitalisation of some words (Graphic Artist, Website Design), and B) why you spelled “traveled” that way—it’s American, and you live in a country that uses British spelling. As Rachael said, “British spelling FTW!”

My Name—*crosses fingers, hoping for NO KABALARIANS* Well, I see it’s original, which counts for something! I like how you’ve broken it down, too. I like the story of your first name a lot—I’m glad I have a unique name too. And I like your name! The story of your middle name is also funny. I think it’s cool you got to choose your own middle name! The other two sections are also interesting, and I’m so glad there’s no Kabalarians or “meaning of my name which is copied from babynames.com”. I like your nickname Blee—that’s a cool name.

My Toybox—Well-organised. I like the giraffe (I just like giraffes in general) and of course the PSGR mouse!

My Cat Jasmine—I’m a little tired of “my pets” pages, but since the page about your name wasn’t what I thought, I have hope… Okay, well. It’s certainly unique: “Invalid ID, numbers (0-9) only!”

My Kitten Thomas—Don’t forget the quotation marks. For instance

My immediate thought was Oh I want one, then he goes I know what you?re going to say, and yes you can have one.

should be

My immediate thought was, “Oh I want one”, then he goes, “I know what you?re going to say, and yes you can have one.”

In the third paragraph, “theres no way” should be “there’s no way”. Anyways, now that the grammar check is over, I like this page a lot! I like how you don’t just say what Thomas likes, how old he is, how cute he is, how much you love him, etc. The whole story adds a lot and is interesting! He is SO cute! I don’t even like cats, but he looks like a little panda, so cuddly and cute. I clicked on this picture first, and I just wanted to hug him so badly!

Google—I know you say these aren’t Googlisms, but I’m not convinced they’ll add anything to your content… Oh, hey! This is something *different*. The link to Names Database doesn’t work, and it’s your “sister’s” Bebo page, not your “sisters” Bebo page. I must say I really liked this whole section because it just wasn’t the same as anything else. Bravo!

We interrupt this review for Clem to read some recent posts. Many of the titles of your recent posts caught my eye, so I had to read through some of them. I enjoyed them all, but especially “Graphic Designers Annoy Me”.

Domain

What you say is a contradictory (don’t you love that word?) because you say you don’t know why you picked the name but then go explain why you did. I like the name a lot—it could tell countless stories.

Web History—In the second paragraph “photo’s and magazine’s” should be “photos and magazines”. In the fifth paragraph, “wehad” should be “we had”. Haha, I remember when I first got FF I was still in frames. On of them was transparent, and I hated the blaring blue of it. I really think that transparent-but-really-blue frames are the way that many of us learn about cross browser compatibility, and maybe that FF is much better than IE. Sometimes web history pages as long as yours can get boring, but I didn’t find yours to be. However, you need to have line breaks. It doesn’t look nice when the paragraphs are all squashed up together.

Credits—Straightforward, simple, and organised.

Themes—All of these themes are nice, but I think the one you chose as default is best.

Was reading “Next Thing On My List” and saw that you want to learn not knit. Do it! Knitting is so relaxing and not even that hard once you get the hang of it. It’s a great hobby to have.

My Artwork

My favourite one is the baby in the lamb pyjamas. It’s SO cute! That’s not to say that it’s the only good thing, since everything is very well-done and high-quality (or at least to my untrained eye; I don’t know anything about the sort of thing you do). Some of things you make aren’t things I personally love, but that’s just my taste. I can tell you spend a lot of time making them all the best they can be.

Visitor Content

Adoptables—So cute! I should start a collection of these on Clemwalrusness. If I do, I’ll definitely use some of yours! I love the fishbowls and the bumblebee.

Web Material—Again, cute cute cute cute. Your icon sets are really nice and I’m a sucker for nice bullets.

Smilies—At last, a variety! The word bubbles are a nice idea. I really like the cat smilies! It’s good that your smilies aren’t just the same thing but in different colours. You must have spent ages on all of your visitor content!

Tutorials—These are straightforward and the pictures make them a lot easier to understand. WOW at the Satin Texture. It’s incredible that you can make that out of a few blurred dots! Wow, just wow. It’s completely incredible the way you make these things! These aren’t things I do, but if I ever wanted to I’d know the place to go to learn how! I’m VERY impressed.

Fonts—So happy that these are your own. I’ve always wanted to make my own fonts… I looked at the website for the program you use, and maybe someday I’ll get it. I like your fonts a lot, especially the last one (”Scribbled Mess”), but I’d like to see more. Obviously you’re busy and everything, but when you have a chance adding more would be good.

Five Mistakes “Web Designers” Make—Very informative, in-depth, and well-written.

Summary

I feel like all I’m doing is really telling all of the people who apply for reviews how great their sites are, which makes me seem spineless and like I can’t give an honest review. However, I’m really just telling my opinion and I believe that most of the submitted sites have been of a high quality. Yours is not exception; from your original content (glad to see NOTHING taken from anywhere else) to your incredible graphics to your informative tutorials and articles, your site is extremely high-quality. The only thing that throws me is that you seem to not care about your grammar, which is obviously because you just don’t bother. It’s not because you’re stupid, that’s for sure; you come across as very intelligent. I just think that before you publish a page, giving it the once-over and making sure your grammar is okay would be a good idea. However, despite this, your site is really, really, really

I added you to my Loved section @ Clemwalrusness!

Thank you so much for a great honest review. I am going to go through all my pages and fix any grammar mistakes and everything else you suggested.

This tutorial will show you how to draw perfect eyelashes the easy way.
First thing you do is make a brush in the shape of a triangle like the following .
Click on the triangle to see what it looks like zoomed in.

Make sure you draw the triangle with the pen tool with stroke off and fill on ()
To make the brush we drag the triangle shape to the brush palette, for more help on making brushes have a read of my making brushes tutorial.
When you drag the triangle to the brush palette, some options will come up so choose art brush, then make the following settings.

Now that the brush is made we can draw the eyelashes with the pen or pencil tool (your choice), like so:

Select all the lines and apply the triangle brush setting to it and it will change like the following:

Now you can change the stroke size if you want on each stroke so you make it look more realistic.



Here is an example of using the eyelash brush in one of my illustrations.