Saturday, March 30, 2013

Diva Challenge #111 Mooka Monotangle


Where has the time gone - guess I've been having too much fun.  Though I've completed several of the recent challenges just have not posted them.  At the end of this post is info on the broken Lightbox issuse and an unofficial (maybe official) fix that does seem to correct the problem.

This week's challenge is to do a monotangle using Mooka.  I love seeing how others use this tangle but it's one that has always been a huge challenge for me.  I've watched the video of Maria drawing Mooka - it's a treasure - and studied the step outs in the newsletter but still have not mastered the flow of this one.  I lost count of how many tiles gave their life in my attempts to create something that one might recognize as Mooka.  During my many attempts I stumbled on to drawing two Mookas to create a heart shape.  I had lots of practice while waiting for my car to be serviced.

One of the things that appeared in my sketch pad took on the shape of a pendant.  From there I added smaller versions of mooka within the curves - reminds me of delicate wire work jewelry.  I used Micron Sepia and Brown pens - did the stippling with the Sepia pen trying to create a hammered metal look - unfortunately the scanner does not really produce that effect.  It's going to take a lot more practice to master Mooka but I actually liked several of the practice tiles I did so that's progress!


Mooka Heart Pendant



click images for larger view

Spent a bit more time working with Mooka

 Zendala tile originally done black on white however
 - thought it looked better after inverting the colors.




Here a few of the other recent challenges


107  Quandry



108  UMT Whyz



110  Get Rid of the Box




Lightbox on Blogger is Not Working
(Note: Lightbox is automatically disabled if Dynamic Views is enabled for your blog.  If this case the following info does not apply to your image display options.) 

***** UPDATE April 4, 2013 - It appears Google has corrected this issue. However I'll leave the post as is - just in case ;>)

On another note - while gathering up the photos for the Diva slideshows - I thought all the folks using Blogger had changed their photo settings as the Lightbox image display option was not working - no more overlay with the thumbnails of all the photos.  Clicking on a photo only opened that individual photo and required the back button (no X) to return to the blog post.  I started digging around and discovered that Lightbox was no longer working on my blog as well.

I went to my favorite Blogger help blog to see if there were any posts there and found a possible solution that I've applied to my blog and now Lightbox is back.  There is no word from Google that there is a problem but it seems to be affecting all blogs built on blogger.  The fix I found - while not official does require using the Edit HTML function.   Always use this option at your own risk and only after backing up your blog.

Here is the link to the post on  The Real Blogger Status 

**** BIG BIG DISCLAIMER  - I have no way of knowing if this fix will conflict with other code in your blog - if you proceed you do so at your own risk.  I am only passing along what worked for me and seems to be working for others.  The Real Blogger Status blog seems to imply that the code may have come from an official source but no way to know for sure.  I looked around on the forum that is mentioned and saw the post that is referenced but again no guarantees promised here.****

I'm no HTML or CSS expert but after several failed attempts I did finally get it inserted correctly.  What's not completely clear in the posting is exactly where to paste in the new script.  I finally found the solution in one of the comments posted to the blog.

Once you click on the Edit HTML button and scroll to the bottom of the code - you should see <html>  as the last item of the code.  On my blog it was at the end of the line of other code and not on a separate line  - like this

</b:section-contents><b:section-contents id='footer-1'/><b:section-contents id='footer-2-1'/><b:section-contents id='footer-2-2'/><b:section-contents id='footer-2-3'/></html>

What I needed to do was insert the cursor here  >|</html>  and then hit return a couple of times.   Paste in the script from The Real Blogger Status so that <html> is at the end - doesn't seem to matter if it is on a separate line - then save your template.  It would also be good idea to backup up your template again so you will have a copy of the most recent template of your blog.

I don't do it as often as I should but creating a backup on a regular basis is a good idea - that way you will always have a recent and updated copy in case you ever need to restore your blog.