How To

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HOW TO (04) make your own slideshow video and get the HTML code to put in your blog

Last week, I made a slideshow video for some of my paintings and shared it on YouTube
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7epYxvM19MU ) Here I would love to share how I did it with you in case you are interested in making your own as well :)

In this case, I used Windows Movie Maker (WMM), but you could also make your own video with Video Impression, Flash, etc, as far as the program allows you to export your file to be one of these formats: WebM, MPEG4, mov, 3gpp, avi, mpegps, wmv, flv, mkv, mp4, divx, ogg, etc
1. import all the images you want to WMM.
2. draw the pictures to the storyboard in the order you want them to be played.
3. edit the effects, transitions, title and credits (they are on the left hand side of the program) to what you want. WMM allows you to have various choices, just play with them.
4. import your favourite song as the background music to make it more interesting. As WMM supports these sound formats: wav, aif, aiff, aifc, snd, mp3, au, mpa, mp2, wma and asf, if your desired sound file is not in any of these formats, you have to convert it to be one of them. In my case, I used Switch Sound File Converter and converted it to be a wav file for convenience.
5. there is a tiny black triangle on the right side of 'storyboard', click the black triangle and choose 'timeline'. Now you could choose when you want your music to start or end when you edit the music in timeline mode. During this process, you could always see and play the preview on the right top side of the program window.
6. When you are satisfied with the effect, click 'file' and choose 'save project'.
7. click 'file' and choose 'publish movie', choose 'this computer', click 'next', name the movie you are publishing, click 'next', now you could choose the size and quality of your movie. I set mine to be 7mb.
8. Finally, click 'publish' to finish this part with WMM.

How to get the HTML code:
1. After uploading your video to your YouTube account, you will get a link for your video, go to that link.
2. you could find 'embed' on the right hand side under the video, click it.
3. now you could customize how your video window looks and its size, change as many times as you want till you are satisfied with it.
4. Now, your code is ready.

It will be my pleasure if this tutorial makes any sense to you. If you have any question, please drop me comments here and I will try my best to answer them.

Play with it and have fun :) I look forward to see yours, XoXo.

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HOW TO (03) stop your sterling silver jewelry getting tarnished

From time to time, I have been asked questions from friends about how to stop their sterling silver jewelry getting tarnished. So, I am posting my answer here and hope you might find it useful as well :)

The reason why silver will get tarnished is that most silver is mixed with other alloys and it's the alloy that gets tarnished not the silver itself. For instance, sterling silver is 92.5% silver and the rest of it is mainly copper. In this case, it's the copper that gets tarnished, not the silver itself. Fine silver (100% silver) does not react with oxygen or water at ordinary temperatures, but it's too soft to be used in jewellery making.
There are 3 methods to prevent your sterling silver jewellery getting tarnished:
1. stop the silver reacting with oxygen in the air by keeping it in an air tight bag or box.
2. get the sterling silver fine silver plated.
3. get a polishing cloth and clean it every time it you wear it.

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HOW TO (02) find the treasury that you thought had disappeared

I still remember when I made my first treasury at etsy, it took me over 2 hours to pick the list. But when I finished the pick and click 'create treasury', it disappeared in just a second :( In the end, I found it again, but it was a few days later. If that sounds familiar to you, maybe you could try my way to find yours again but in a second:

1. log in to your etsy account
2. click this link: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/
3. you could find the 'your treasuries' in blue on your right hand side, click it
4. all your treasuries should list in the page

I hope it may help you find your 'lost' treasuries :)
 
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HOW TO (01) get your own RECENT VIEWERS gadget code

I have just added a badge called recent viewers to my blog. It took me a while to research and test how to do it. So if you are also interested in having your own recent viewers gadget, following this instruction will only take you a few mins to get your code:

1. open this link: http://www.blogcatalog.com/
2. sign up an account, make sure you choose 'I have a blog' and fill in the information about your blog
3. clink this link: http://www.blogcatalog.com/account/widget
4. follow the instructions on the page to fill in all the information you need to customize your widget, make sure 'usernames' is ON.
5. click 'update code and preview widget' , then your personal code will be automatically generated.

Once you know how to make it, it's easy, isn't it? :)