No wallpaper for February

Unless I manage to either a) freeze time or b) steal a TARDIS, there's not going to be a wallpaper for February.
This is what's been keeping me busy all month.
I may just manage to squeak out a new iGoogle theme, but February is a short month...

About the iGoogle Papercuts themes

I have been fielding an increasing number of emails lately about the designs behind my iGoogle Papercuts themes. Most of these folks are interested in somehow acquiring the designs for their own uses, whether as prints or for art projects. I figured I'd write this post now, so I can just direct future emails to it.
All of the designs (floral and animal) are traced from the art resource book, Chinese Folk Designs, compiled by WM Hawley and put out by Dover Publications (although it looks like it may have been published by others as well.) The book contains some 300 different designs, including many more floral and animal designs as well as some Chinese characters (hanzi), landscapes and buildings, and even some of the Eight Immortals and other important religious figures. They're white designs on a solid background, making them easy to manipulate via computer, copier, or old-fashioned tracing paper.
If you would like to use these designs, I would highly recommend finding this book at your library or book store. I got mine from a used book sale and it has proven to be a valuable investment.
Because these designs are not my original designs but merely taken from this book, I cannot (and will not) provide posters, cards, or other prints for sale. In the future, I would love to create my own set of papercut designs inspired by these classics but, alas, that is a project for another day.

Internet Popular

I'm #5 on iGoogle's hottest themes listing today! I don't think the first two count, either, as they're the first two for all listings.
I wonder how long this will last...

No wallpaper for November

I won't be able to finish a wallpaper for November, mostly because I'm housesitting at my parents and don't have access to my desktop where all my files and art programs are stored. My dad does have Photoshop, but the walls I'm working on include at least some vector component, so they'll have to wait.
In the meantime, I'm working on a bunch of iGoogle themes. I just finished a snowflake one, and I'm going to create a Japanese paper pattern theme to complement the Chinese papercut theme I already have up. I'm also in the planning stages for a separate site for my themes, since they're all just using a wiki page on Google Code which is very plain.
I'm hoping that Gmail themes will be opened to the public with an API similar to that for iGoogle, because I'd love to make themes for Gmail as well. I've already made a few themes internally (a port of the Tetris theme, a green floral variant of papercuts, and a glossy theme like the DA! v10 layout) and I'd love to make these available to the public.

New iGoogle Skin coming soon - Snowflakes

I've created a new iGoogle skin - wintery blue snowflakes. You can see a preview in the iGoogle sandbox. It's submitted to both the iGoogle and inThemes directories, so it should be available publicly in a week or so.
I made this snowflake graphic for a set of Google Docs holiday templates and figured, why not also create an iGoogle skin with them?

EDIT: 11/22/2008
This theme is now available in the inThemes directory.

EDIT: 11/25/2008
This theme is now available in the iGoogle directory.

Tetris iGoogle theme live!

After several weeks of waiting, the Tetris theme has been added to the iGoogle directory!
Preview/add to iGoogle
I've also added individual versions of the Papercuts theme in case you prefer a specific color/animal theme -- hopefully that will be live in a week or so.

Tetris iGoogle Theme

Here's my latest theme in development. I hope to finish it this weekend. As my coworker pointed out, it's too bad you can't embed sound in a theme and get it to play the Tetris theme (not that I advocate embedded sound in webpages, but it would be kinda cool as an opt-in feature for this one.)
Also, LOL!

Papercuts iGoogle theme live

Looks like the iGoogle theme directory got a big update today.

Preview and add my Papercuts theme to your iGoogle page from here.

iGoogle Papercuts Theme Preview

I've submitted my iGoogle Papercuts theme to the directory. Here is a preview. I'm not sure how long the review process takes, but I'll be sure to keep this blog updated on its status :)

Coming soon: iGoogle Papercuts theme

Don't these images look familiar? ;)
I plan on reoptimizing all the images for this iGoogle theme over the weekend, and then uploading to a Google Code Hosting project. Once that's done I'll be submitting it to the directory. It'll be available on a preview basis while it goes through the iGoogle theme review process. It'll be a daily theme with seven different skins in all, cycling through animals including a dragon, phoenix, carp, butterfly, and several different birds.

Other Projects

Just as an FYI, I am also doing some work designing iGoogle themes. These won't be anime themes, but will also be something to look out for from me. My first theme is going to be based on the same Chinese papercut designs I'm using for the DA! layout.