Hey my WinCustomize buddies -

I'm just letting you all know the reason I've been on hiatus.  It wasn't that I was only active here until I was made Master and then bolted.  [e digicons];P[/e]

My husband, whom I had been supporting for 12 years, decided he would get hassled less about doing nothing with his life, if he left me and moved in with his cousin, so I've been nursing a broken heart and trying to get my finances together because when the jerk left, he took our only car with him.

I've got a couple of new skins started, but honestly, I'm not going to be able to crank them out as fast as I used to, because in order to keep my mind healthy, I need to work out every day, spend time in mindfulness meditation, and I've been getting out and about, since finally buying myself a used car a couple weeks ago, doing things with the few friends and acquaintances I've made here on my own in Tulsa.

I just wanted you to know, I still have skin ideas, I still plan on carrying through with them, but I'm a mess right now, and although it's been 3 months since he left, it's not getting any easier on me, and I feel like I'm just going through the motions of moving on with my life.  I found myself writing poetry a few nights ago, which I have never done before, so the creative flow is still within me; at some point, I'm hoping I'll be able to channel this pain into Photoshop and create some dark, gothy, industrial, hard skins.

Haven't sliced it up or put it in SkinStudio, so I'm not sure if it will work, it's just a mockup, and I don't even have a start button yet, and I definitely don't have a name.  Anybody have any ideas?

I'm posting this thread to see if there is any interest in a community Windowblind -- by this I mean a pass-around project, somewhat like a patchwork quilt, where the first person does a section, say the start menu, then passes it on to the next person, who would do the task bar and task buttons, and then they would pass that on to the next person who would do the windowframes, etc., etc., until we all decide "it's done" -- kind of the Stone Soup of Windowblinds.  I'm pretty sure it will look rather Frankenstein-ish, but I think it would be a lot of fun (and funny), if you're kind of new to skinning Windowblinds it would be a way to get your feet wet without too much commitment/expectation/disappointment and learn along the way.  I will volunteer to be the project coordinator, and if something "doesn't work" I'll post pictures with work-arounds (if I can think of any) and if there is no work around, we can discuss why it happened and what could be altered to make it work.  I think this would be a great hands-on learning project for anyone who wants to participate. 

If you're up for this type of a project (I think we would need a minimum of 2-3 people plus myself) let me know in this thread.

I uploaded my WB, Calla, to the Windowblinds category 11/22, had to make a change and edited and reuploaded the same day...it's been in pending status now for a while, and the date for entries has closed.  Does that mean this skin won't be included?

Since I'm pretty much finished with my GUIC submission (still sitting on it, giving myself some time to make sure all things are perfect), I've been putting my creative juices towards my Halloween desktop, which is my favorite skin to create.  [e digicons]\o/[/e]

You know how some skins just seem to build themselves, and others are kind of an agonizing frustration?  This one is an agonizing frustration.  Something's just not right, and no matter how many times I look at it and change things, it's not feeling like it's working, (maybe it's cursed?) so I thought I would post a WIP thread and get some help from the community. 

Give me your thoughts on what needs to change. 

I keep skinning the MDI buttons (Edit Controls-->Edit Menus and Menu Bars-->Menu Bar Items-->Min, Restore, Close buttons), but I don't ever see them during my work day.  Is this another item that's gone the way of the dinosaur in Windows 7?

Just an FYI, the Windowblind, Rainlendar and SysMetrix that I uploaded last evening (which I named Stardust, after searching WinCustomize for any WB named Stardust and none was found) has now been renamed Cerulean Star, so as to avoid any conflicts with people's Windowblinds lists.  I apologize for any confusion the first one caused.

I would like to know what the criteria upon which the Windowblinds for the GUIC will be judged.  This is my first year entering.  I have 2 WBs I've created that I'm very proud of.  I can't decide which one to enter.  One is much more "me" -- original, different, out-of-the-ordinary, interesting, still very useable, but definitely not vanilla.  The other one is extremely clean, dark and blue--I had more of a skinning-for-the-masses in mind when I created that one. 

I guess the bottom line question I have is which is going to count more -- originality or downloads/popularity?

I know in the past it was possible to make animated Windowframes (AVman did it--I can't remember which skin, though); I've been trying this now and it just turned into a mess.  Is this still possible or when SkinStudio went in the direction of using layers, was the animation ability destroyed?

I'm having a problem with a WB I'm making in FireFox.  There is a 1 pixel gap between the scrollbar and the right and left side of the per pixel windowframe, as shown in this illustration.  I can't figure out if it's a problem with the Windowframe or the scrollbar.  Any ideas on what to try to fix this?  Thanks in advance.