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Moon Costumes supplies adult and kid’s costumes, holiday costumes, ‘cosplay’, holiday costumes, outfits for magic and clowns, and all sorts of costume accessories such as makeup and tattoos, masks, hats and wigs, props and decor, party supplies, and even costumes for pets and team mascots. They have over 10,000 costumes and masks for sale on their website. Talk about one-stop shopping!

In addition to selling costumes for parties, Halloween, and to people who simply like to dress creatively, the Moon Costumes site caters to the costume subculture, and the company behind it has the foresight to do more than just sell to its customers. The blog attached to the website keeps them updated with all sorts of timely information on the subject of costumes. You see this more and more with commercial sites: savvy online retailers understand that they have the makings of a online community in the shared interests of their visitors, so they cater to those visitors even when they’re not actively engaged in buying. The operators of these sites are usually quite passionate about the niche products they sell, so not surprisingly they become authorities on the culture to which they supply their products.

As I looked through Moon’s Costume blog, I realized what an enormous industry surrounds costumes for adults and children: by no means do people rent or buy costumes only for Halloween nowadays! Clearly for many people, elaborate dress-up games are a way of life.

This blog has many reviews of industry events like costume trade shows, conventions and competitions, from all over the world, and I know I was surprised at just how many of them there are. YouTube videos are liberally featured, which makes sense for a visually-oriented site. One large source of interest in costumes is Japanese anime, which has been hugely popular around the world for many years. Anime fans put a lot of time into incredibly creative and often outrageous costumes. In the ‘cosply’ area, the Moon Costumes blog has a huge selection of outfits that people who are passionate about anime will appreciate.

The Moon Costumes company is a family-owned business, and they have created a website that is a comprehensive online supplier of costumes and outfits for every occasion. It’s also an online destination for the latest news and information about the costume industry, and the latest outfit designs.

Very good design, excellent overall execution!NULL

“Canvassing my Friends” is a blog created by graphic designer and painter Sarah Ritchie to showcase her wonderful art, and as she puts it: “….to make myself accountable, for my painting, to all my ‘friends’ on Facebook. One by one I will paint my way through my list of friends, using each person as the source of inspiration for one painting – their personality, life story, my memories, our interactions, etc.”

As someone who makes her living through her obvious artistic talents, it surprised me to read that Sarah has felt constrained by a bit of fear in allowing the painter inside of her to emerge. But of course, most creative people have self-doubts regarding their talent and are often reluctant to actively produce.

It is a credit to Sarah that she is confronting this fear, and is brave enough not only to admit it on her website but to push through it by actually producing as she has promised herself, her friends and–through her site–the whole world. At the moment there are nine canvases featured on “Canvassing my Friends”, each one of them inspired by a person in Sarah’s life. While this is Sarah’s way to hold herself accountable in her stated effort to produce more, one has to believe that the world is a better place for her having executed her plan as well.

This is an absolutely inspired format for a website! Just imagine how honored any of Sarah’s friends must feel to have a painting dedicated to them featured on this site. Apparently it’s working for Sarah too, as there are over 100 blog posts on “Canvassing my Friends” already, and the blog is only six months old. Keep going Sarah!

I also found Sarah’s musings on art and creation interesting; it’s a pleasure to read the thoughts of a creative person as they consider their world, and one gets the feeling that Sarah’s written expression of her thoughts on art history and related subjects informs and potentially expands the scope of her art.

Blogging lends itself very easily to presenting the fruits of a creative person’s labors, and it gives them a way to give meta-commentary on their art and their life at the same time. In this way a fuller picture of the artist emerges, one that complements the art without complicating it or diluting its impact. “Canvassing my Friends” is a perfect example of this, and also a reason why Facebook, wonderful as it is to help us reconnect and stay connected to friends, isn’t quite enough to adequately present the work of a person who has a lot more to reveal than what they had for dinner last night.

I hope Sarah continues painting–having created a perfect context in which to present her art, as tributes to/celebrations of friends, I suspect the momentum evident on this blog will continue.

One very small suggestion I would have for the site is to give us a larger photo of each of the canvasses: there are obviously deserving of it!NULL

“Canvassing my Friends” is a blog created by graphic designer and painter Sarah Ritchie to showcase her wonderful art, and as she puts it: “….to make myself accountable, for my painting, to all my ‘friends’ on Facebook. One by one I will paint my way through my list of friends, using each person as the source of inspiration for one painting – their personality, life story, my memories, our interactions, etc.”

As someone who makes her living through her obvious artistic talents, it surprised me to read that Sarah has felt constrained by a bit of fear in allowing the painter inside of her to emerge. But of course, most creative people have self-doubts regarding their talent and are often reluctant to actively produce.

It is a credit to Sarah that she is confronting this fear, and is brave enough not only to admit it on her website but to push through it by actually producing as she has promised herself, her friends and–through her site–the whole world. At the moment there are nine canvases featured on “Canvassing my Friends”, each one of them inspired by a person in Sarah’s life. While this is Sarah’s way to hold herself accountable in her stated effort to produce more, one has to believe that the world is a better place for her having executed her plan as well.

This is an absolutely inspired format for a website! Just imagine how honored any of Sarah’s friends must feel to have a painting dedicated to them featured on this site. Apparently it’s working for Sarah too, as there are over 100 blog posts on “Canvassing my Friends” already, and the blog is only six months old. Keep going Sarah!

I also found Sarah’s musings on art and creation interesting; it’s a pleasure to read the thoughts of a creative person as they consider their world, and one gets the feeling that Sarah’s written expression of her thoughts on art history and related subjects informs and potentially expands the scope of her art.

Blogging lends itself very easily to presenting the fruits of a creative person’s labors, and it gives them a way to give meta-commentary on their art and their life at the same time. In this way a fuller picture of the artist emerges, one that complements the art without complicating it or diluting its impact. “Canvassing my Friends” is a perfect example of this, and also a reason why Facebook, wonderful as it is to help us reconnect and stay connected to friends, isn’t quite enough to adequately present the work of a person who has a lot more to reveal than what they had for dinner last night.

I hope Sarah continues painting–having created a perfect context in which to present her art, as tributes to/celebrations of friends, I suspect the momentum evident on this blog will continue.

One very small suggestion I would have for the site is to give us a larger photo of each of the canvasses: they are obviously deserving of it!NULL

The “Beautiful Song of the Week” blog: a simple idea perfectly executed, which addresses a need that so many music lovers have today.

With instant access to every song ever made, the question becomes how in the world to choose from the titles presented to us by iTunes, Internet radio stations, and other “selection aggregators”, which for commercial reasons are interested in giving us the widest range of choices in music that they possibly can. Naturally these sources will include listeners’ brief opinions of songs and interesting suggestion technologies that feed us musical choices based on our previous purchases or what our friends like.

These automated solutions for finding new music have always seemed inadequate to me, and the song remarks are usually too brief to be considered reviews. And does a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ really give you a basis for listening to a song?

I sense that the creator of the “Beautiful Song of the Week” blog feels the same way. The solution at which he has arrived turns the presentation process completely around. Rather than trying to give a comprehensive view of the entire musical universe, this website gives a heartfelt review of one piece of music per week. The selections are unconstrained by period or style, and this is a major strength of the site. The musical tastes of the blog’s writer are diverse and in this way one can be sure of broadening one’s exposure to music generally by visiting the site frequently. One visit had me listening to songs by Nina Simone and Blur that I’d never heard before.

The tagline under the title on the blog’s homepage says “Uncovering the world’s loveliest music”, as opposed to uncovering what the cool kids are listening to, or what a record company has decided to crate a marketing campaign around. The “Beautiful Song of the Week” blog is clearly a labor of love, a celebration of music generally. Since each song has favorably impressed the writer he makes no effort to be ‘fair and balanced’; he instead conveys his enthusiasm for each title via the heading “What makes this a beautiful song”. Is it subjective? Absolutely. Will his clear passion for each of these musical gems compel you to give them a listen? I bet it will, and he has embedded a music player as well as a ‘buy it now’ button in each of the song reviews to make it simple. There’s even a fun “Recommended listening activity” heading, to further convey the mood of the piece.

For the writer of the “Beautiful Song of the Week” blog the site is clearly an outlet for him to write passionately about the music he loves; for us it can be a new, better music discovery tool, and maybe even something more. A lot of smart people talk about the need for ‘curation’ of the almost overwhelming and unmanageable flow of information on the Internet today. The personal touch of someone whose judgement we trust will increasingly be the means we use to arrive at ‘the good stuff’ in the realm of creativity, in every medium. The “Beautiful Song of the Week” blog is an excellent example of this much-needed new function of the Internet. It’s in my RSS feed reader now, and it might just belong in yours too. NULL

The Kiss And Makeup blog is the product of a young woman’s passion for style, fashion, makeup, and hair. Clearly Emma, the creative force behind the site, not only has a great eye for all things related to feminine aesthetics, she’s a writer who is able to quite easily convey her enthusiasm for these subjects.

As I perused Kiss And Makeup I kept thinking that, whether she is aware of it or not, Emma is creating the foundation for an Internet presence that could complement her eventual career choice, whatever that might turn out to be. It’s no secret that for many people today a blog can function as a calling-card that helps clients discover and find out more about a consultant or freelancer they are contemplating hiring. It’s also an outstanding way for employers to get a much fuller sense of a person than an interview and a CV.

In the meantime though Emma uses Kiss And Makeup as a vehicle for reporting on the fruits of her latest shopping excursion with friends or coverage of the latest fashion trends, and much more.

Recent blog posts on the site detail an eye makeup technique, a review of quirky handmade jewelry, a gallery of shoe fashion, and an impressive range of style-related subjects. Clearly Emma’s enthusiasm for fashion knows no boundaries!

Kiss And Makeup is an attractive blog with a creative header that completely suits the website, and credit should also go to Emma for the inspired choice of the domain name that she chose for her site: nice little play on words there. The site is built on WordPress, the popularity of which shows no signs of slowing down.

Kiss And Makeup should be in the RSS feed of or bookmarked by anyone who enjoys keeping abreast of the latest fashions, and swapping ideas and opinions on everything from haute couture all the way through to shopping for thrift store bargains.

And, for any creative young person who wants to share their vision or samples of their creativity with the world, Kiss And Makeup is a magnificent example of how the blog format can be a virtual platform through which one can meet potential friends, kindred spirits, and who knows, maybe even find a job or market to potential clients. Great job Emma!NULL