Announcing DT on Wednesday, and...

Just to let you know:

First of all:

I'm announcing the DT on the HH blog on Wednesday.  I've got most people's mini-bios already, which will be on a page I'm linking to from the announcement.  If I haven't got a mini bio (a few sentences about you) and an image of you, please email them to me as soon as you can!  It can run without them if you can't get them to me in time (afterwards will be OK too as they will be staying in place for the 6-month term) and everyone will have a link to their blog (whether you've sent me a bio or not).

Secondly:

The first "challenge" will be the week after the announcement.  I'm planning to make the challenges live every Wednesday, so each week I'll need the images in advance please (ideally the Saturday before).  Each of you only needs to create images/projects fortnightly and you'll be divided into 2 teams.  I've put a calendar page up here  with all the planned challenges for the DT term till mid-February - you'll see which team you're in (and if you ever forget the reminder will be there).  Although it's all planned out and will probably run as planned, I may make changes to it so please do check it every so often (although I plan to blog any changes on this blog for you).

Thirdly:

I'm planning to make you all authors on this blog.  This means you can write posts and pages (and it's possible you may want to say something to the whole team - not selling/promoting or anything like that!) but the main reason is so you can upload your images and links here.  There will be a post for each new challenge, labelled with the date it's going live.

Most of you have Blogger (blogspot) blogs and will know exactly how uploading images works.  For those of you not familiar, you'll probably work it out quite easily and it's probably pretty similar to what you're already using (any problems though, shout up!).  The images load quicker if you've already compressed them but it will compress them for you if necessary.  Under each image I'll need you to put a link to the actual post on your blog where that image/card/project is talked about (and any info I should mention if there's anything you think I should say, such as if you've written a tutorial or used something unusual). This will make composing the challenge blog post much quicker for me each week.  When you create the link, please check the button "open in another window".

If at any point you want to upload your images sooner than the uploading blog post goes live (to get ahead if you're going to be on holiday, for instance) please just create a post similar to the ones I've used.  If it's out of sequence I can always create a new one at a later date using your images.

I've already got some images I can use on the first or second challenges (both of which will be "anything goes").  But more would be good so please add to the next posts when you've sorted out being an author (emails to be sent later!)

Lastly:

When you create your own blog posts, please link to Handmade Harbour's shop.  Ideally, I'd like you to link to the page where your readers can buy the image you've used and I'd also like you to link to the home page if you can.  One of the links should ideally be in the first couple of sentences of your post (not required, but would be good if you could manage it!).

Thank you all!