Although Summer is here, you can still put some Spring into  your desktop, and this MyColors theme fits right in to the much warmer weather going on.  This is a theme designed for MyColors, and to find more information about MyColors, you can read through a walkthrough or view a screencast with more information. 

Visual Style and Wallpaper

The Spring theme has a vibrant colors that reflects pretty much everywhere.  I have been running some darker skins lately, and the bright colors were a welcome change.  The colors are not too bright either, and working with it on a daily basis wasn't a problem at all.

The wallpaper is simple, yet such a beautiful design. 

Icons

The color continues with the icons, and the ones with the flower designs are probably my favorite. 

Gadgets

The warmer seasons often have some unpleasant weather sometimes, so the included weather gadget can keep you updated of the current and upcoming conditions for your area.  This weather gadget is also expandable into a mini-mode to give you even more screen real estate if needed.

The Spring MyColors desktop is available for both Windows Vista and XP.  If you are a subscriber to Object Desktop then you are eligible for a discount for MyColors themes.  For more information visit the Spring MyColors theme page.

First looking through the galleries I thought this was going to be a tough week, but as I moved along I actually had to add a couple of more entries than usual, just because there was a bunch of stuff I wanted to feature. 

Now for this weeks picks!

	Shifty DX in DesktopX Themes by J. PuterDudeJim Really cool theme that has the ability to change colors just by adjusting the sliders.  This is great as it will match a wide variety of desktops.
	Waves in Dreams by muckyman A nice mix of colors and motions for your desktop.  Very nice.
	League of Extraordinary Skinners for IconPackager by Asect This is the matching icon set for the LoES suite which can be found on Skinartistry.com.
	IRONMAN folder in ObjectDock Icons by Libardo I can't believe this was done using Photoshop.  What an incredible job this is.
	Xeno for RightClick by Nimbin I really like the dark design, and I have quite a few WB skins in mind that this would work great with.
	Aladdins Cave in Wallpapers by ahabkaba I really enjoy the style and creativity of these wallpapers.  They look good on such a variety of themes.
	Arance - Orange in Wallpapers by floina This is a very nice and refreshing wallpaper.  Perfect for those summer-inspired desktops.
	Calm Fields in Wallpapers by DEVJIT Another beautiful scene which looks great on the desktop.  I would like to see more resolutions though.
	Red Pearl for WindowBlinds by voidcore This is a very creative skin.  The start menu and title bar buttons are probably my favorite, but it's a superb skin all around.  Great job.
	Haven for WindowBlinds by Night Train The colors are fantastic!  This is an example of a skin that will be perfect for a summer desktop as well.  Doesn't matter, it's a great looking skin for any time of the year.

Congrats and great work to all the skinners who submitted works this week.  Check out the skinners personal pages for more of their works.  See you next week!

You probably know that WindowBlinds is the best way to change the visual style for Windows Vista and XP, but did  you also know it can also help you manage your wallpaper collection as well?  Yep, WindowBlinds 6 has it's own wallpaper manage built right in.  It's had this feature for a while, but with the new UI layout in WindowBlinds 6, things look just a bit different than in previous versions.

Lets take a walk through the wallpaper section in WindowBlinds 6, and let me show you how you can use it to make the process of managing your wallpapers a little easier.

As seen in the screenshot above, the wallpaper tab in WindowBlinds will present two other tabs.  We will start off in the "Change my wallpaper" tab, which should be the default selection.  There are two different views for the wallpaper area, one with a preview section and one without.  Which you use is a matter of your preference, but you can easily switch between them by clicking the button seen in the screenshot below.

By default, you should see wallpapers from the Windows directory, WindowBlinds directory, and others in the wallpaper section.  Bring up the wallpaper settings window by clicking the tool icon.

This will bring up a dialog where you can add and delete folders which contain images that you would like to use as wallpapers.  The drop-down menu is where you can set the images to tile, stretch, center, or use the smart mode.

Changing the wallpaper is easy.  Once you have selected the image you want, just double-click the image and your wallpaper will change to that image.  If you want to mix it up a bit, move over to the "Random wallpaper settings" tab.  Here you can set the wallpaper to change at certain times and actions.

• Change the wallpaper every time you logon
• Change the wallpaper on a Monday morning.
• Change the wallpaper every hour
• Change the wallpaper every morning

Just use the drop-down menu to select which setting to use.  To select the images to use in the random settings, just double-click the wallpaper image and a check will appear by images that will be used. 

Now you see how easy it is to manage and change your wallpapers using WindowBlinds 6.  For more information visit the WindowBlinds website at www.windowblinds.net.

Was it just me, or was this a very long week?  Lots of goodies again this week, and although I have said this many times, I hope the momentum keeps going for most of the summer. 

Now for this weeks picks!

Go through all the galleries and post some of the skins you really liked from this past week.  There are always such a wide variety out there that I like to see what else the community is liking.  See you next week!

For many of you, this video might not show anything new, but for new users this demo video gives you a highlight of the main features of WindowBlinds 6.  If you know someone who wants to change their desktop, you might send them the link to this video.

Attention recruits!  For the next "Desktop Tour" I wanted to show off another MyColors theme that was recently released, and that would be the Camouflage theme.  As the name implies, this is a military inspired theme that can turn your desktop into the barracks you have always wanted.  Before we start, you can find more info about MyColors from Stardock, you can read through a walkthrough or view a screencast with more information. 

Visual Style and Wallpaper

Camouflage is obviously what this visual style is based upon, but it doesn't get hidden in the desktop.  The skin is sleek and the camouflage design is not overbearing at all.  I was concerned it might be "too much", but the design was well implemented and I had no problems using this theme throughout the workday.  The wallpaper compliments the theme well, and stays true to the overall design as well.

Icons

These have to be one of the coolest icon packs I have seen in a while.  A tank for the Control Panel icon, binoculars for Search icons, and many other military icons makes for an awesome pack.

Gadgets

The Camouflage theme is not short on gadgets either.  First we have the media player.  This was designed to look like a military-era radio, but has all the bells and whistles you would need in a desktop media player.

There is also an expandable weather gadget which will show your designated forecast, and give you the option to link to your local radar and other weather information. 

You always need to make sure you are on time for the all important mission, so it's essential to have a calendar and clock right there on your desktop. 

The Camouflage MyColors desktop is available for both Windows Vista and XP.  If you are a subscriber to Object Desktop then you are eligible for a discount for MyColors themes.  For more information visit the Camouflage MyColors theme page.

Hello again all!

Above everything , I must thank those who chose to promote me, I am honored and will strive to live up to the new rank, THANK YOU!!

now,...

It's another week and another artist to be highlighted, but first to finish my last week's article:

I ran late last week and have now learned to be more organized in my information gathering. Hopefully this will help for future reviews. I never got to show off KittyMalone's  Igloo wb.

so here it is, hope you like it as much as I do!

I love the little polarbear in this skin, he just reminds me of the bears my husband collects (yes I have a whole room devoted to teddybears, especially white bears). I had some problems with it initially but once I reallized that I had the wb config set to "vista-ize me " and it was causing problems, all was resolved and the skin looks great!

I chose a wall that brought a slight bit of darkness to the skin, because I just love that look, and it was a bit too bright and shiny for my moods. Edge of Insanity by HOTRODLED fit the mood perfectly.  I was lucky that there was a skin out there that fit so well with the start menu as you will see, it looks like the little bear is sleeping under the branches of that tree there.

I have been messing with DesktopX lately and added some widgets and objects  to give some depth to my desktop. Corner Clock by MountainDragon fits nicely up in the left hand corner of my screen. the coloring matches the blind very well and there's a little button in the corner that if clicked will hide the clock if it gets in your way.

Hard drive meter by Xira is also colored perfectly for this skin. Though I am still trying to figure out how to make it work right , I like how it looks there on the screen. given time I'll have it working right I'm sure.

Circle Glass by Bilbo1930 is a great tool it includes a weather feature as well as a drive meter. You can use any background you want  with this skin because it is totally transparent.I'm looking forward to using this in the future so I expect you'll see it again sometime.

I wanted to get the best look for this skin, and so I chose Igloo V1 by Snowman . While I usually go out of my way to find skins that aren't considered part of the  whole package, in this case as well as one or two others, staying with the theme works best.

When I was installing Igloo, I imediately thought of Voidcore and since there are two great skins to use here , I did. First is Whitebear IP and second is my absolute favorite cursorfx theme Whitebear CursorFX I don't think I could add any more to that skin and make it look better. In this case , less is more, and clutter doesn't work with snow.

ok, now that I've shown you what I did with Igloo, on to this week's artist:

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This week I chose to highlight Jazzymjr , simply because I noticed how many of Jazzy's skins I already had! Though sometimes her designs are a bit frilly for me, for the most part they really are versatile.

First to be mentioned will be Sea Jasper . Green is my favorite color , hands down. So when this skin came out , it was an "automatic download" for me(I some times go into auto click mode when confronted with a goodly amount of skins to dl! )

I recolored the greenish blue cursor from  M-drop color pack  by Artur Berk ,just slightly . It didn't need much , just a little shift.

After that I went on the hunt for some DesktopX items. I found Killer Weather by Tiggz and fell in love. Ok so now I have two weather objects to fight for supremacy on my screen! This weather object is really sweet, and will go with any pearlized wb you can find( I know I checked all the ones I have.) it also looks nice with the minimalist white blinds.

For my calendar, I chose HV LinearCalendar by XX . The calendar is slim, doesn't obscure my wall and very easy to view at a glance from across the table .

I found a neat little meter object that looked really sharp with this set up, Cpu & Ram Meter by vukovicnikola .

I chose to combine an Object Dock with this skin, as it just worked that the wall and skin could handle a busy desktop. The dock I used was Seginus by Messiah1 . The tile-p version dragged to the right hand side of my screen  balanced this look out nicely.

The right click menu I chose looked like it should be part of the skin, though it was created for another of Jazzymjr's blinds. Amphitrite by Fairyy~  is a perfect double for a SeaJasper blind.You would never know it wasn't meant to be used with this skin. I really like Fairyy~'s work, very versatile.

OHMY!Nitro Xtreme (lite) by D. Arnez is the Icon Package I used here. The coloring and style is on the nose and while not exact, they compliment the coloring of SeaJasper very well.

Lastly, I will mention the beautiful wall, which , though it's a fractal, has depth, color and style. The author of this wall, makes some of the prettiest fractal papers I've seen on the site. I read recently that the only reason the artist started making walls, was there wasn't one on the WC site that a neighbor thought would work with his setup. I am very grateful to that neighbor!!

Radiating by Frankeif  is a gorgeous blend of greens,blues grey's and purples. I know many think fractal papers are not stylish, but if you look at the depth each paper has, the different lines and swirls and convolutions they take, they really are a treat for the eye.

Now , for my next treat, I give you Bronze Daize  this is not one of Jazzymjr's  more recent works, but it's one I like when I am looking for some earthy tones.

I dragged out one of my water pictures ,( I live near the shore and adore the ocean and beach views .) Antares by Nefil .

This one, isn't your usual greenish blue with sunrise or sunset. The view is one of a sunset before a storm, where everything has that eerie reddish tone to it and you know the upper atmosphere is going to let loose in the next day or so. I think these moments are out of this world beautiful. Though now that I think about it I bet the scene was meant to look like something from a different solar system.

The Icon Package was more difficult to find this time. I looked at several before settling on a recolored version of Element by Skinhit. There really aren't many IPs that work with  water scenes that aren't decidedly nautical in design. So I found one that worked with the skin instead of the scene and blended the color in to match the hues of the scene.

I also recolored the CursorFX theme Lava by Cavan1 . The mottled look of the cursor worked well over the darker colors of the skin and wall.

You'll notice I went a little crazy with DesktopX objects and widgets on this theme. It needed something to give it the depth the wall couldn't so I added Tropik Weather by Lovely62 very pretty and the perfect color match for the wall.

The clock is Bubble Clock red v3 by Himangshu , and the news reader is Newsfeed Sample (joeuser) by _Martin_. I wanted an audio object and found this one Dark Glass Audio by MountainDragon.

Well I couldn't have all that and not have a meter , now could I? So I found Meter graph small(updated_revised) by Gnaw. It's a nice small transparent meter that monitors your cpu, memory, and the dataflow  over your web connection.

I couldn't forget the right click, I've been adding one to almost all the themes , couldn't forget this one. Dark Two Right Click by Messiah1 is the one I had on hand that matched the best with this look.

My last look at works by Jazzymjr is Hearts Afire. Now I know it's kind of frilly for me, but I know there are people out there who really like that look. I'm not big into space themes either but find that I should include those styles in my work too so, here's frilly for ya Wulfie style!

I just couldn't get too flowery , so I hunted long and hard (and I mean long and hard!!) for a wall that would make this skin pop, but wouldn't make me feel like I was visiting my sister's bathroom. Finally I hit upon Neon Poison by Teddybearcholla. I had to "mirror" the wall to make the design show up to it's best advantage (for those of you who are skinning impaired, I opened the wall in PaintshopPro, clicked on "image" then clicked on the word "mirror" that reversed the wallpaper so it could be viewed properly here)

To get the icons I wanted, I had to recolor Bright Icons Suite version 1  by Alperium. I was going to use one of the sets starone created but none of them would allow me to recolor and they just didn't match with the colors she's created.

I used Core Weather by Mormegil (another of my favorite artists) it was simple, had a slight band of that rose color, and promised me a beautiful moon in the evening.

One really cool widget I found was Ultima`notes by HAPTORK. This thing is SO customizable you might as well call it skinnable!!! I had fun with different looks but settled on a rose on the corners and a copy of the wall for the background(not mirrored) and chose a script font for elegance.

The CursorFX theme I chose here was Flame by Artur Berk (ya I really love his cursors! ) I recolored it to a nice rose shade and haven't changed it yet!

I stuck with the theme for my right click and used Hearts Afire RC by Fairyy~.  there weren't any right click menus that would work with the theme I had going as well as this one.

I tossed in a calendar , just because I could, and found one that was slim, and see thru! perfect for my very cluttered screen.

Linear Calendar  by _Martin_  fit the bill perfectly, it's a vertical calendar that is very neat and tidy.

For my "Grande Finale" I plucked a rose to compliment this rosy theme. Pink Rose Clock by Buzzh58 is a quirky lil thing with a faerie tossing around in the middle of the waterbubble clock. It was amusing to my granddaughter to watch that little girl twirl!

Well, I know this was a long one, and I appreciate your looking. I promise next week won't be so long . And I also promise I won't highlight an author every week . I think I'll do it every other week or maybe once monthly.. we'll see .

Have a great week folks!!

Wulfie

It's a short week for me, so This Week in Skinning is coming just a tad earlier than usual.  Saw some really awesome stuff this week, especially in the CursorFX and Wallpaper galleries.  If you have Windows Vista and DeskScapes, don't miss the latest edition of This Month in Dreams.

Now for this weeks picks!

There were so many items this week that I just didn't have the room for, but equally deserved being featured.  Take a browse through the galleries and tell us what skins you liked from the past week.  See you next week!

Every month or so Frogboy does his “FrogBlog” where he gives an insight of things going on in and around Stardock from his perspective.  I have always enjoyed reading them so I that kind of inspired me to do something similar.  I wanted to write a blog showing the stuff going on not only in Stardock/WinCustomize related areas, but the other various skinning/tech communities like WinMatrix and Skinning.net that I visit regularly.  I also thought it might be fun to show off the the things I am working on, because I always appreciate the community feedback because much of what I do is for the communityy.

I first wanted to start off saying how pleased I am with the response to the WinCustomize SkinCast.  When we first started it  both Zoomba and myself were a bit unsure how it would be received and how well it would do.  Well after our 7th episode the number of listeners is at what I would consider to be a great number, and it seems to be steadily rising.  So thanks to everyone who listens and supports the show.  With that being said, one thing we are still lacking is more community input.  We have had a great set of guests on including moderators and skinners, and we should be having our first developer guest soon too. 

I have been getting a lot of questions recently about the status of the SkinStudio 6 tutorial, especially  since we have started to talk about the ‘08 GUI Champs.  The SKS6 tutorial is finished, but with all the cool features that Neil has been adding lately, I am taking a good part of this week and updating the tutorial and the associated screenshots.  Once that is done it will go for some more formatting and then should finally be released to the public.  I know it’s been long awaited, but I think this tutorial series will greatly benefit people interested in creating WindowBlinds skins, but might not be too sure where to start.  I wrote the guide from a beginners perspective, and I’m excited to see the response to it.

On the game side of things the Political Machine has been my main focus.  I love this game, seriously.  Maybe it’s because I’m a political junkie, but regardless it’s just fun to play, and who doesn’t want to create your own bobble-head anyway's?  This game has consumed many late nights, and helping find any last minute issues has been fun to say the least.  I can’t say too much else, but be on the lookup for more news.

Well I won’t keep it too long for the first one.  As always feel free to let me know of any feedback or suggestions you might have for future articles and features.  See ya next time!