October 2007 Archives

We've been experimenting with a lot of additions here at the puppytoes.net store's blog, and we've added 2 features: ratings and bookmarks.

Rate Us!
At the bottom of each post, you'll find stars that allow you rate that particular entry. We originally wanted the ratings system to apply to designs only, but found it much easier to implement the standard entry-rating system. So let us know what you think! If you like a particular post or design (or not - hey, those stars go both ways!), give us a star click and contribute your opinion! Of course, if you have further opinions, you can always leave us comments.

Bookmark Us!
Another feature we added to our blog is the ability to add us to your favorite bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Google bookmarks, and others. If there's a particular entry or design you like, simply click the appropriate button and add us to your favorite bookmarks. Pretty neat, eh?

Blog ratings are courtesy of Mark Carey over at mt-hacks and the bookmarking links are courtesy of the Sociotags for Movable Type plugin

Cheers,
Joanne and Cragar
from the puppytoes.net store

Now that the weather is becoming colder here in our neck of the woods, we feel much less guilty about spending time indoors. So instead of doing yardwork or home renovations on the weekend, it's a perfect time to throw a poker party!

Originally this article was going to be about how to throw a tournament-style poker party, but as I wrote it I realized there were much better resources for the actual mechanics of setting up a poker tournament. A favorite of mine is Home Poker Tourney - it's a great resource that includes poker chip reviews, a card buyer's guide, blinds schedules, and tons more. I know I personally used that site a couple of years ago when buying our first large chip set.

What we'd like to do here is offer ideas on making your poker party one of a kind, offering poker night recipes and products to spruce up your shindig from the puppytoes.net store. Afterwards, maybe everyone will be asking when you'll be throwing the next party!

Since there's a lot of information to cover, we'll be doing this in parts - Part I covers inviting your guests.

We've been stewing in DSL outages for the last week here at the puppytoes.net store, so we've had plenty of time to come up with some new designs! We have some new geek and poker shirt designs in the works - we actually should have started with designs about how utilities like the phone company are so cheap they're outsourcing their (useless) tech support to Mexico, India and the Philippines or how their voice-activated menu system is ridiculous and could result in damaged phones as callers smash them into walls in frustration....

but we digress....

We decided to roll out our brand-spanking-new dealer buttons for your next poker game!

Greetings!

Before announcing our latest design, we'd like to address this entry title.  We're not really distressed, but lately our designs have been!  We've been feeling particularly grungy and monochromatic lately, so we've been reflecting that feeling in our new designs.  We've done a couple, like Wings, Dead Money II, and even Fluorine Chemist. We've been loving the spattered, scratched out feel of it all. 

Our latest distressed design offering is titled, "Poker Queen".  Sure the whole "Poker Queen" thing may be a cliche, but we kind of liked how the crest kind of frames the old girl.  Not to mention, queenie's got a pretty mean poker face going on!  OK, seriously, though, we like the scratched up feel of this design.  We even decided to create it in different colors, so it kind of follows our whole monochromatic kick - brown/tan design for a brown t-shirt, maroon/pink design for a maroon tshirt, etc. 
"Poker Queen" apparel starts as low as $15.99 and is available on short and long sleeve tshirts, tanks, and sweatshirts in a variety of colors.

Like our grungy, distressed stuff?  Want to see more?  Let us know what you think!

Cheers,
Joanne and Cragar

Well, it took some horsing around with CSS (copy and paste bit me in the ass and I somehow pasted a copy of my entire CSS file smack dab in the middle of the existing file - don't ask me how I did it - brain fart, I guess), but we've finally launched the puppytoes.net design blog!

We'll be using this blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest happenings at the puppytoes.net store, including design features, new design announcements, new product launches and information, and perhaps even the odd "tips and tricks" - great ways and ideas to use your puppytoes.net merchandise. With the holidays fast approaching (yes, we know it's not even Halloween, but in retail it's all about preparing for the holidays, right?), we'll be sure to keep the blog rolling.

One feature we hope to add soon is a "People" section, featuring photos you , our customers, send in. Send us photos of your dogs in puppytoes.net swag, poker night photos with your puppytoes.net pokerwear or card guards (we'll even accept a bad beat story!)... anything! We'll feature it right here on our design blog. Send all submissions to designfeatures at puppytoes dot net.

That's it for this evening (our eyes are still blurry from ferreting out lines of CSS), check back often for updates!