Once Upon a Lens

Over eight weeks in July and August I participated in Squidoo’s first summer school for 2009. There were something like forty-seven participants and every week we put ourselves to the challenge of creating a new lens according to guidelines set out by our instructors.

It was a great way to push ourselves into making new lenses, try new formats and network with other squids doing the same activity. It’s amazing (and inspiring) to see how practically everyone had a different interpretation of the same exercises.

Here are the eight lenses I produced for the assignments as well as the school lens I created to document the process:

• Week 1 – Dog Dayz
• Week 2 – Flaming June
• Week 3 – Eating in Thunder Bay
• Week 4 – My Squid Love
• Week 5 – How to make Smoothies
• Week 6 – My Threadcakes Cake 2009
• Week 7 – Burnt Shadows
• Week 8 – Corby Rose Garden
• BigGirlBlue’s Summer School 2009

Before summer school was over I was signing up to participate in Squidoo’s Buddy Up program to introduce new people to Squidoo lensmaking. And while many were not as excited about it as I have been I am sure there are some future giant squids in my pack. Here is my Buddy Up lens introducing some of their work. Please stop by and visit some of my buddies lenses and make their day.

Participating in these extracurricular activities at Squidoo has been a great way to rejuvenate my summer lens building. If you get the opportunity I highly recommend it.

Things seem to be moving along nicely. I’ve added an about box that will show up at the bottom of each of my posts and I’ve registered with Gravator so my image shows up with my posts. I was wondering how that worked – thanks for pointing that out Captain

Under options – Privacy it looks like the default setting is “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors”. I reset my option “I would like my blog to be visible to anyone who visits, including search engines, archivers and in public listings around this site.” I thought I’d mention it in case any other lensmaster are unaware.

Although I see now that my blog roll has disappeared. Off to investigate…

My space is starting to look a little more like home. I’ve added a few widgets. One for the RSS for one of my sites and another for 10 of my favorite movies; and I even get affiliate credit which is cool.