Challenge - Week 7

Challenge : Island Paradise & Not Distracting

Welcome to another edition of the #CSSChallenge!  A refresher real quick of how this works.  Check out our Archives to find the complete listing of all the themes thus far.  Pick a challenge and design a skin based on that inspiration.  It needn't be a literal translation, but something what it reminds you of or the color scheme, etc.  We've had several wonderful suggestions for themes so far and many more to come every week.

This is a joint project between CSS-Babes and journalcss, so it no longer uses the group specific tag, instead, tag your finished skin with #CSSChallenge to be added to our Weekly Challenge Collection.  I will showcase these in an upcoming post.  (we only have one so far!)  The challenges never expire.  So you are welcomed to join in on whichever date you'd like.  Okay, without further ado, I bring you two more themes for this week's challenge!

Island Paradise

_{suggested by gillianivyart}

It's summertime and that immediately evokes images of the beach, and makes me long to escape to Hawaii or something tropical and filled with sunshine and sand.  I used to live at the beach and never appreciated it as much as I should've.  Of course, you don't need to design the skin to look like an island, you can use a tropical color scheme to set the mood.  When you think of beaches and salty water and sand between your toes, what does that bring to mind?

Inspirations

Not Distracting

_{suggested by UszatyArbuz}

To counter our previous theme of CSS Animated, UszatyArbuz thought it might be a fun contrast.  Unassuming and non-distracting skins can be the perfect accompaniment for a art focused journal or as a clean and minimalist layout with the attention set on the text and not the background imagery.  I know myself to be easily distracted.  It takes me 3 times to read a dA article.  The first go, I admire the CSS design, the second scroll through, I ogle the art, and finally, on the third time around, I manage to actually read the article!  So the goal of this design would be to do the opposite.  Clean design with the focus on content.

Inspirations

Sorry for the delay in posting.  My schedule goes all wonky and I get lazy.  I should've made this days ago and set to post already!  Last week was a funky week, there were no posts really since the #AskaBabe series is the 1st & 3rd Friday, whereas #TuesdayThumbshare has been moved to the 2nd & 4th Tuesdays of the month.  Which meant, last week was the 1st Tuesday and had the 2nd Friday!  So this week, both articles will be coming.  Yes, it gave me a break last week, which I should've taken full advantage of!  Now this week will be busy  I am an avid procrastinator.

CSS Tip

_{by gillianivyart (with help from GinkgoWerkstatt - comments)}

Gallery Testing

This is something I have consistently forgotten about.  Recently, I had submitted a brand new gallery skin and GinkgoWerkstatt took a screenshot of the horrible mess it was.  We quickly figured out the problem.  I can't seem to find the screenshot of it, but it was all mucked up.  The culprit was Grid vs Wall.

When testing your gallery skins, switch between Grid View and Wall View as it drastically changes the look of your skin and may mess up your entire layout.  Test in one, switch, adjust the code and switch back and adjust as needed.  Otherwise, everyone who visits the gallery in use will see something differently than the other person!

Currently, I am advising others to hold on making new gallery skins, as we anticipate there may be some major changes to the structure as dA Timeline hints.  But for those who'd like a bit of help with learning the current structure, here is my personal template.  It is free to use and I update it on GoogleDrive when there are changes.  I will bold new additions and add comments concerning changes.  Gillian's Gallery Template CSS

Skin dA, one journal at a time!